The 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 media platform grabs attention, infuses some and disturbs others. In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s campaign to oust TikTok drew the attention of outsiders to the video app. Earlier this year, the Clubhouse came to prominence as a people scrambled for invitations to enter chat rooms for the Silicon Valley elite. The platform called Discord isn’t new, but it talks about $ 10 billion worth of sales to Microsoft has got the world asking about this heart game chat app.
1. What is Discord?
Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, programmers and entrepreneurs, founded San Francisco-based Discord in 2015 as a platform for people to chat while playing video games together. The free service offers voice, video and text as well as gamer-friendly features, including the ability for users to broadcast the name of the game they are broadcasting. Through the pandemic, with people getting involved at home and playing more video games than ever before – and also looking for ways to communicate safely – Discord became a hub for communities as diverse as the Black Lives Matter movement, homework help, book clubs and more. He began to position himself as a “talking place.”
2. How big is it?
The site now claims more than 140 million monthly users and claims to have generated $ 100 million in revenue last year. Discord doubled its valuation in December last year to $ 7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. It has raised approximately $ 480 million, according to Crunchbase, from incoming investors Calpa Greenoaks.
3. What is the attraction?
The app grew in popularity with multiplayer patches like 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 gamers and is now positioning itself as appealing to anyone who wants to be able to pull in to two. similar interests. On Discord, anyone can create their own community, or server; regular attendees have a membership ranging from one to hundreds of thousands. A typical user may belong to one private Discord server, to hang out with friends, as well as public servers dedicated to discussing their favorite movie or sports team.
4. Why is Microsoft interested?
For Microsoft, these mixed communities are probably Discord’s biggest selling point. The software giant, which last year tried to buy the TikTok social media app and held talks to get Pinterest Inc., has been buying for assets that would give access to thriving communities of customers, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. The Xbox console maker has recently defaulted several video game companies, including the publisher ZeniMax Media Inc. in September for $ 7.5 billion. Microsoft may be trying to integrate Discord with Xbox Game Pass, its Netflix-like membership service for video games. But one person familiar with the talks said 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 its lack of ads. Instead of building channels with attractive ads like other social media services like Twitter Inc., Discord makes money with a membership service called Nitro. For $ 10 per month, members can customize tags next to their usernames, upload larger files and stream at higher video quality.
6. What kinds of problems has he had?
Discord was used as a gathering place for white nationalists a 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which turned violent and led to the death of a protester. Since then, the company has made efforts to clean up and make their site more inclusive. The investor consortium is notorious for promotion GameStop stock Discord had a server from the perch on Reddit but was banned earlier this year for not doing enough to stop hate speech.
7. Is it basically still a gamer site?
It is still very popular with gamers, but people use it for all kinds of conversations, even on official video game channels. Discord has grown to be a useful way for video game companies to directly promote products and nurture communities. The company will test servers based on popular video games, giving them a verification stamp. 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 hit game Among us, for example, there are more than 413,000 users. Us Us community leader Victoria Tran said it was “very chaotic, but full of fun.” She said people use the server not only to talk about the game and to find people to play with, but to have broader conversations about their lives and interests.