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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'

#171

Post by zeku »

yomlica8 wrote: post #51
hardware2win wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive used voips like mumble ts ventrilo (still had 2.1.4 exe on disk week ago) skype teams for like 15 years Discord was first to provide: Strong chat, voip, file share, video streaming and bots in one solution Lack of user hosted servers security mess - have you ever been DDoSd or stalked because you changed teams in MMORPG? In compare to enterprise shit: push2talk Also: identity per "server" Easy to invite: link ins…

Those are good arguments for game chat but it seems generally terrible for forums. The argument I've seen for forums is people do not want to deal with the burden of hosting and securing forum software. But that is an explanation for reddit eating most forums to me, not why Discord is increasingly being used to place of them.

Generally the "replace reddit" combo is:

Discord to function like an IRC chat and a Wiki to store the important information on the topic of the forum.

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

#172

Post by thaumasiotes »

everforward wrote: post #162
thaumasiotes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Names are never unique. That's not how names work. This causes all kinds of pain irl, it's not really a good example. IRL has the same issues non-unique usernames do. It's almost irrelevant in a small community because of the number of members. It becomes a problem in large communities because you can't find someone based on their name. Discord's issue was downplaying the discriminator so much that a lot of people…

> IRL has the same issues non-unique usernames do. It's almost irrelevant in a small community because of the number of members. It becomes a problem in large communities because you can't find someone based on their name.

The issues are.. trivial at most. If you can't find someone based on their name in a large community, that can't cause any problems, because... how did you learn their name? If you know who they are, you can find them. The situation where you're given a piece of paper and told "find a specific person by this name, but not anyone else by the same name, within X time period or you lose this game" doesn't actually arise "IRL".

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

#173

Post by imtringued »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #56
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…

It pretty much replaced my WoW guild's forum overnight when we started using it for voice. The guy who was paying for the Mumble rental asked us to try it and we really liked it immediately. Pings that raiders will actually see, amazing. One click to join instead of having to dial thru a wizard with an IP and port (I know mumble had support for that but nobody knew how to use it, and WoW ingame chat does not let you…

That is actually it. Discord was the first app that could hold a candle to Mumble and it did everything in the browser without having to install a client or run a server. I don't understand the people who don't understand Discord's value proposition. When it was coming out it had basically no competitors. It was obvious as early as 2016 how popular discord will become.

It is only now after the pandemic that the competition has established itself. Matrix is essentially a copycat of discord. Now people complain and argue against discord, because they have options.

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

#174

Post by ssnistfajen »

sledgehammers wrote: post #140

I wish we could as a species create a social media and communication platform not based on greed, addiction, micro-monetization, walled datagarden hoardism, and so on, but something above all that bullshit.

There's the Fediverse sphere of platforms that largely fit your ideals but fragmentation is a glaring problem that prevents it from much wider adoption.

Any centralized platform where data is hosted is going to cost an obscene amount of money to operate once it gains traction. So they need to find a way to monetize it in order to keep the lights on. Throw in some venture capital and you've got yourself yet another startup that thinks they can scale infinitely.

My biggest fear is Discord gating old convos behind a paywall like Slack. Discord doesn't do that because it is still technically a different product from Slack, but should monetization drives intensify I'm afraid that'd be one of the easy channels they are going to take a look at.

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

#175

Post by jjulius »

paddw wrote: post #158
jjulius wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Discord, thus far, has generally been monetizing in ways I find pretty generally positive. I'm going to celebrate that until they actually start monetizing in shittier ways. I'd argue that's why we end up in the position we often end up in, as users. We take it little by little until it's too late. The "Well yeah that's capitalism and it sucks so /shrug, right?" argument feels kinda weak to me. If Discord's profitab…

There's no way Discord is profitable.

Then, and I recognize that this is just my opinion, we should just let it die rather than going, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?".

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

#176

Post by Springtime »

Filligree wrote: post #6
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 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…

> you don't even need to create an account immediately

Maybe some users have found it different recently but while this used to be the case years back when I joined (it was IRC style where you just picked a nickname and began chatting) I tried this twice again recently for someone—both with and without an invite—and it required creating an account (ie: verifying email and in another case it required a phone, inexplicably).

The prior onboarding experience was far superior and I have to think an important part of their earlier growth.

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

#177

Post by jjulius »

rcxdude wrote: post #141
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".

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)

As I mentioned in the other comment chain, it's the slippery slope of enshittification encroaching upon Discord IMO.

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

#178

Post by fndex »

ShamelessC wrote: post #170
fndex wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one reason Discord is so popular and many people don't talk about is the same reason why games like Minecraft, Tibia, GTA San Andreas and many other old games are still popular today. The reason is that they allow users to customize the software through code. When you create a Discord or Minecraft server, they act as a "platform" for your server, you can write code to customize every aspect of it. I think tha…

Are you referring to bots?

Yes.

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

#179

Post by noirbot »

jjulius wrote: post #116
noirbot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's essentially just "we all agree capitalism sucks, right?" in more words. I'd rather I just get a free voice chat app forever, but given that that's not the way this current economy works, I'm going to take the wins where I can when a company is choosing to monetize in ways that are generally good for everyone involved. Discord, thus far, has generally been monetizing in ways I find pretty generally po…

>Discord, thus far, has generally been monetizing in ways I find pretty generally positive. I'm going to celebrate that until they actually start monetizing in shittier ways. I'd argue that's why we end up in the position we often end up in, as users. We take it little by little until it's too late. The "Well yeah that's capitalism and it sucks so /shrug, right?" argument feels kinda weak to me. If Discord's profitab…

But that's what I mean - I don't feel like they're beating users for more profit here as much as just eating Patreon's lunch. As a user, if someone I'm paying $5/month on Twitch or Patreon wants me to pay them via Discord instead, that's fine by me as a user. Discord has generally been doing a good job of making more money by selling more and better features to people, or at least trying to. If they're not profitable now, and I doubt they are, I'd rather they keep trying to innovate or improve on other people's bad businesses to grow vs. charging to not make the platform worse like Reddit and co.

As someone who used to pay for a Vent/Mumble/Teamspeak server, as well as hosting for chat apps, Discord is currently giving me that for free. I understand that that's costing them money they need to make back some way, so if they can do that by stealing Patreon's business, or making a better Steam, or a better Jackbox, or charging companies for better server features like higher bitrate audio/video, then that's fine by me.

I'm just not seeing how this new feature is obviously worse for users where we have to "take it little by little until it's too late". You're acting like Discord is removing features and doing clearly malicious things that we're all just tolerating. The name changes are a misstep, but doesn't seem malicious. Them adding new features and trying to sell them seems like just an extension of the brand, which as long as it doesn't degrade the core product, is pretty much the best way for a company to grow.

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

#180

Post by stiltzkin »

nirvdrum wrote: post #84
INGSOCIALITE wrote: post #43

I seriously dislike trying to use Discord, and I get annoyed when open source projects direct questions / support to a community discord as opposed to a wiki or faq of forum. Searching discord is painful, and god forbid you ask a question that someone else asked 3 weeks ago that you weren’t sitting in front of the chat for. The only discord that kind of makes sense (that I’ve used, and I haven’t used many) is the doo…

Discourse is a nice experience once you're in, but the lack of federation is problematic. With NNTP, IRC, or even email lists, I can participate in multiple communities from one screen. With Discourse, I need to register on different sites and then visit each of them individually and regularly if I want to actively participate. Consequently, I don't often participate in those communities.

That is a topic already discussed in Discourse Meta, I seconded to use Open ID.
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