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Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

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

#141

Post by rcxdude »

jjulius wrote: post #57
jasonlotito wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Discord is building things that users of Discord already use Discord for. They are just making it easier to set things up and manage. This is them knowing their customers.

>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".

Which is neutral or good for users, especially if it subsidises the free chat platform. Patreon doesn't provide anything meaningful to creators or users beyond a payment mechanism (seriously: it is so bad at hosting and presenting the actual content it's increasingly common for creators to just not use it for that. And even if they do post anything but a link on patreon it's still on discord before that)

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

#142

Post by juki »

rjbwork wrote: post #60
doix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friends and I still use IRC (for text) and mumble(for voice chat), I'm guessing as long as they are still maintained or if the source still compiles, we'll probably keep using them. The discord interface suffers from modern design syndrome, the information density isn't there. I open it and see inline images/gifs, link previews, reactions etc. There's a bunch of padding and avatars around each message. I know some…

>There's a bunch of padding and avatars around each message. I know some people consider those things features, but I personally hate them. They have compact mode that eliminates that stuff. I don't see avatars. I just see colored user names. There are image embeds but I tend to see that as a positive, especially with some bot capabilities. For instance here is what the chat looks like in the server for one of the ro…

Images can also be turned off under "Text & Images" in the settings.

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

#143

Post by dumpsterlid »

this_user wrote: post #81
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…

This is exactly the reason why decentralised services cannot win. People talk about Mastodon instead of Twitter, or Lemmy instead of Reddit, but the overwhelming majority of users wants convenience above everything else. They don't want to figure out which instance to join and how to get access to federated content.

[dead]

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

#145

Post by sc00ty »

coldpie wrote: post #67
Deukhoofd wrote: post #4

The article feels a bit over the top, if I'm reading this correctly this is just Discord becoming a direct competitor to Patreon (as many Patreons already basically boil down to "get access to my Discord server")

> if I'm reading this correctly this is just Discord becoming a direct competitor to Patreon Man, really? That sounds great . Patreon sucks really, really hard. It's one of those websites & apps where you're amazed someone managed to screw up that badly. Like, you have to put serious effort into making software as bad as Patreon is. Quibbles about their business model aside, Discord actually knows how to make functio…

Can you elaborate on the issues you're talking about? I support a couple of creators and my interactions with the site have been fine, so I'm curious what issues you have with it.

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

#146

Post by kmmlng »

Ekaros wrote: post #28
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…

I'm not entirely sure people even want the content to be discoverable by search engines. Or care for that matter. Discord is great for running community with multiple chat channels and occasional voice chats. Like any chat communication it is accepted that it is ephemeral. Not that often accessed or searched for.

Yes, I would say it's a feature, bot a bug. There was a brief phase when social networks first came about when everyone was fine just putting their entire life on display. Then everyone realized that privacy is kind of nice. You don't want all your stuff out there long-term easily findable and for everyone to see. You don't need absolute privacy either. You have no problem talking about things with your friends in public, even though strangers might eavesdrop. The same holds on discord. Anyone could listen in on your conversations, but it's unlikely enough that it doesn't really matter.

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

#147

Post by dgellow »

Sharlin wrote: post #137
dgellow wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot stand discord. Everything in the screen is trying to grab your attention all the time, unless you explicitly disable all sorts of notifications. It’s also really hard to follow discussions if you’re off for some time or want to understand what people are talking about when you join a channel. The async aspect of forums worked way better for community building in my opinion.

I mean, IRC was great for communities, and Discord is just a modernized, centralized IRC, for better or worse. And one of the "worse" parts is the incredibly cluttered, in-your-face, ADHD interface.

It’s anti-ADHD. I have an ADHD diagnostic, using discord is a constant fight. You’re trying to follow fragmented discussions, while receiving notifications everywhere that more things are happening at the same time.

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

#148

Post by xp84 »

jghn wrote: post #47
veave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say Discord is bad as a forum I'm reminded of Ford's quote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"

Speaking for myself, I will never use voice chat. And I’ve always preferred message boards over text chat outside of very specific circumstances (Eg at work, dm to a friend)

I feel you on this — to me it’s baffling that anyone could use chat, such as Discord, as a replacement for a forum, or Reddit. Asynchronous is so different than synchronous. Chat rooms aren’t new either. But they mean you can only meaningfully communicate with people in your rough time zone and even your same daily routine. I suppose you could pretend Discord is Reddit, if all users were super judicious about only conversing inside “threads” unless they’re trying to start a truly new topic, but people seem to do a lot of chat outside threads, so even finding threads requires wading through the ocean of single messages. Reddit (and arguably Digg, I forget which did it first) solved the main issues with forums: the cost one of who would actually set it up, the signup one (because it was one centralized account), and the thread-management one (voting meant you could probably find most of the best posts even on a thread with 100 or 1000 or 10,000 posts). For all its hideous faults lately, I wish it would be “mastodoned” (where the feature set in the key ways is arguably better, such as the character count not being required to be 280, and having decentralized moderation instead of “whatever TWTR decides to bother with”) rather than have everyone flee to something that is a mismatched replacement. It would be like if HN collapsed and we tried to use “a Twitter hashtag” as the replacement.

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

#149

Post by thaumasiotes »

paulmd wrote: post #120
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…

Yeah. Does anyone actually remember Teamspeak/Mumble/Ventrilo, lol? Discord is an incredibly better UX. Those programs feel like they're from 2000, they're clunky to set up, and the reality is they're still way better than what came before (eg Roger Wilco). (for some inane reason wikipedia lists the installer size for roger wilco... 768kb, now there's a sensible chuckle.) Also, they need a hosted server (which most p…

> Hashtag usernames aren't a problem in small community chats... they are a problem if you're planning on making a reddit competitor, usernames really should be globally unique for a public board.

What? Why?

Names are never unique. That's not how names work. Why would usernames be different?

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

#150

Post by faangsticle »

bovermyer wrote: post #23
faangsticle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't but most users don't care. Just like forum users would be like "nvm fixed it" without considering anyone else.

I'd argue that the use case and the target audience are different. Also - the "nvm fixed it" types are not universal to all forums. They just tend to hit the technical forums.

The point is that the target audience of those who want search and the target audience of those who want community don't necessarily overlap, and the latter are the one searching for a new "home" and they may not care about the needs of the former group. Some people will even prefer knowing their discussion isn't easily found online.
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