Discord app for download in the Apple App Store.
Photographer: Tiffany Hagler-Geard / Bloomberg
Photographer: Tiffany Hagler-Geard / Bloomberg
Every month or two, a social networking platform attracts attention, intriguing some and discouraging others. In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s campaign to oust TikTok brought excessive attention to the video application. Earlier this year, Clubhouse grew in importance as people skirmishd for guests to join Silicon Valley’s elite chat rooms. The platform called Discord is not new, but it talks about a sale of 10 billion dollars to Microsoft has come to wonder about this video game-centric chat application.
1. What is Discord?
Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, programmers and entrepreneurs, founded Discord, based in San Francisco, in 2015, as a platform for people to chat while playing video games together. The free service offers voice, video and text features, as well as player-friendly features, including the ability for users to broadcast the name of the game they play. During the pandemic, with people stuck at home and playing more video games than ever before – and looking for safe ways to socialize – Discord became a hub for communities as diverse as the Black Lives Matter movement, homework help, book clubs and more . It began to present itself as a “place to talk.”
2. How big is it?
The site now claims over 140 million monthly users and says it brought in $ 100 million in revenue last year. Discord doubled its valuation in December last year to $ 7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. It raised a total of about $ 480 million, according to Crunchbase, from investors inclusive Greenoaks Capital.
3. What is its attraction?
The app has become popular with multiplayer hits such as Fortnite, Epic Games Inc. Players like to be able to talk to each other while taking out the enemy. But Discord has attracted fans beyond the players and is now positioning itself as attractive to anyone who wants to take advantage of a hive of similar interests. On Discord, anyone can create their own community or server; current servers have subscriptions ranging from one to hundreds of thousands. A typical user could belong to a private Discord server, to stay with friends, plus public servers dedicated to discussing a favorite movie or sports team.
4. Why is Microsoft interested?
For Microsoft, these diverse communities may be Discord’s biggest selling point. The software giant, which last year sought to buy the social application TikTok and had discussions to buy Pinterest Inc., has bought assets to provide access to thriving user communities, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The Xbox console maker has recently set up many video game companies, including the publisher ZeniMax Media Inc. in September for $ 7.5 billion. Microsoft may be looking to integrate Discord with Xbox Game Pass, its Netflix video game subscription service. But one person familiar with the talks said that Discord is more likely to go public than sell itself.
5. How does Discord make money?
One of the keys to Discord’s popularity is the lack of commercials. Instead of populating channels with intrusive ads, such as other social services such as Twitter Inc., Discord makes money with a subscription service called Nitro. For $ 10 a month, members can customize tags next to their username, upload larger files, and stream better video quality.
6. What kind of problems did he have?
Discord was used as a gathering ground for the organization of white nationalists the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which became violent and led to the death of a counter-protester. Since then, the company has worked to clean up its site and make it more inclusive. The coalition of investors is known for growth The GameStop stock in his Reddit perch also had a server on Discord, but it was banned earlier this year because it didn’t do enough to stop the hate speech.
7. Is it basically a site for players?
It is still extremely popular with gamers, but people use it for all sorts of conversations, even on official video game channels. Discord has become a useful way for video game companies to directly promote products and encourage communities. The company will check the servers based on popular video games, giving them a stamp of authenticity. Some game developers participate in their Discord channels, allowing fans to interact directly with the people behind their favorite titles. The official Discord community for the successful game Among us, for example, it has more than 413,000 users. Among us, community director Victoria Tran described it as “quite chaotic, but very fun.” She said people use the server not only to talk about the game and find people to play with, but to have broader conversations about their lives and interests.