Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 308 posts

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#91

Post by jjulius »

noirbot wrote: post #64
jjulius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are just making it easier to set things up and manage. This is them knowing their customers. Let's call a spade a spade - this is them knowing their customers, yes, but I'd hardly say they're just making things easier. It's Discord saying, "Oh, people pay for this kinda thing through Patreon? We'd actually like that money instead, please".

Sure, and if they can offer a better product than Patreon then it's good for Discord and for the people running the communities. Most folks I know who use Patreon loathe it - they've barely improved the product in the last few years, so Discord feels like they're in a good position to offer a better service for some users.

I'd argue that the improvement for the users is just a byproduct in Discord's eyes. Pardon my pessimism, but I don't see Discord just deciding to stop monetizing more things. This is the encroachment of enshittiffication.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#92

Post by newZWhoDis »

serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Discord growth hack (that somehow slack has still not figured out) is making a stupid-easy shareable link that anyone can click to join your server.

It just works, almost never expires, and you don’t have to deal with logging in/barriers to access content (more than once).

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#93

Post by bluecalm »

dandellion wrote: post #14
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Public communities like reddit and twitter keep getting worse, and with people going increasingly to a closed community like Discord, I feel like we're entering the dark ages of the internet. It really sucks, I hope we'll se some sort of renaissance after.

You need consequences for being a moron to avoid having your community being overrun by morons. I don't think you can have that in public anonymous settings at least not for a long time.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#94

Post by d3nj4l »

bovermyer wrote: post #20
veave wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy, they created a product that was better than the alternatives. It's better than forums, it's better than IRC, it's better than teamspeak, and the list goes on. Turns out it's a pretty easy product to make, too - as long as you are willing to burn money.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so. But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition. - Forums are easy for search engines to index - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable - Forums have good threading in general - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) - It's easy to have completely different identities on differe…

From the perspective of the average user:

- Forums are easy for search engines to index : don’t care

- Old threads on forums are easily discoverable : don’t care

- Forums have good threading in general : don’t care

- Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) : don’t care

- It's easy to have completely different identities on different forums : don’t care

And this is why discord won. :)

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#95

Post by dboreham »

pxue wrote: post #21

I'm so confused by the love of discord. Maybe I'm dating myself but Can someone explain to me why it's better than traditional forum plus some VoIP like teamspeak?

> traditional forum plus some VoIP like teamspeak

I really dislike using Discord (visually confusing, spammy), but they've clearly hit the ball out the park in terms of adoption. The fact that you could provide similar functionality by combining two other products isn't really relevant is it?

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#96

Post by sneak »

dandellion wrote: post #14
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

Public communities like reddit and twitter keep getting worse, and with people going increasingly to a closed community like Discord, I feel like we're entering the dark ages of the internet. It really sucks, I hope we'll se some sort of renaissance after.

It's quite the opposite of dark: Discord and whoever buys them gets to read the logs of every chat and every DM ever.

It's got to be a huge trove of behavioral and personal data that is immensely valuable to ad companies. People say all sorts of stuff in private DMs they'd never otherwise think to share with big tech.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#97

Post by pndy »

bovermyer wrote: post #20
veave wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very easy, they created a product that was better than the alternatives. It's better than forums, it's better than IRC, it's better than teamspeak, and the list goes on. Turns out it's a pretty easy product to make, too - as long as you are willing to burn money.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so. But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition. - Forums are easy for search engines to index - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable - Forums have good threading in general - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) - It's easy to have completely different identities on differe…

The only thing counting in favor of discord is the ability to use as many servers as you like with a single account, while you might face forums where links in the posts gets visible only if you register an account. I don't recall seeing any discord server so far that would lock posted content from their users. Tho there are servers that request you to agree on terms and go thru some simple verification to prove that you're a human being and not a bot.

Personally, I'm not a fan of situations where communities suggest you joining their discord in order to get in touch with them or receive help faster, because most of the time it feels like I'm joining a playground full of adults behaving like kids.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#98

Post by worble »

KronisLV wrote: post #49
Filligree wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

> Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work, and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. It think that Discord is generally good at what it does, except that I never could quite get the screen sharing working - there would never be audio from any software/game that I would be running, no matter what I tried. But a lot of it…

If you're on Linux, screen audio just doesnt work full stop.

There are some modded versions of the discord app that get around it[0], I don't know exactly how they work but it does actually allow you share audio.

0: https://github.com/maltejur/discord-screenaudio

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#99

Post by Workaccount2 »

d3nj4l wrote: post #94
bovermyer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than Teamspeak, yes. Better than IRC? Eh, I guess so. But let's chat about that "better than forums" supposition. - Forums are easy for search engines to index - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable - Forums have good threading in general - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) - It's easy to have completely different identities on differe…

From the perspective of the average user: - Forums are easy for search engines to index : don’t care - Old threads on forums are easily discoverable : don’t care - Forums have good threading in general : don’t care - Individual forums are completely independent of each other (if one goes down, the others don't care) : don’t care - It's easy to have completely different identities on different forums : don’t care And…

If the average user is just someone who wants look at memes all day, sure.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#100

Post by Cthulhu_ »

avian wrote: post #74
raxxorraxor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI is optmized for the usual ADHD kid on cocaine that really needs every stimuli maximized. The text density is attrocious. I guess they want to copy the Twitch model with microtransactions. Of course that would conflict again with making content actually discoverable. It is nice for chat, but not really for information exchange. I do think that many communities are making a mistake if they solely rely on it.

You're getting downvoted, but I think low text density contributes to the low quality of conversation. I've commonly witnessed conversations that were going around in circles, with people just tuning in and re-asking questions that were already asked and answered in the same conversation two or three page scrolls up. If it's not on the bottom screenful of text in a channel it might as well not exist on Discord. Which…

The downvotes are for shitting on a debilitating disorder and making fun of its surrounding stereotypes.
Post reply on HN