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by n8cpdx8 hours ago |
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upvoteby lunar_rover7 hours ago|
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For how it got so big, after it took over the gaming market initially it's likely network effect in action.

Discord is a centralised IM + basic forum with commercial polish.

Small communities can't afford site hosting and moderation, FOSS alternatives like Matrix are significantly inferior products. Fandom killed independent wikis, Reddit killed independent forums.

If Discord ever goes down, there will be decentralised services competing and advocating freedom until a new centralised service takes all the users for itself, just like Mastodon and Bluesky.

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upvoteby m4rtink6 hours ago|
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Basically dumping - they made an objectively superior product that was completely free to users, funded by investor money without any plans for immediate profitability and long term sustainability.

That was all nice for a few years, but it was clear it can't got like this for ever - and here we are.

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upvoteby bardak3 hours ago|
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Their constant treadmill of paid cosmetics, for lack of a better term, that no one was asking for and at least monthly Nitro beg screen is pretty indicative that they are having issues making revue and are desperately throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
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upvoteby rocketpastsix8 hours ago|
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As far as I can tell, Discord doesn't delete history so you can join an older discord and scroll back. 99.99% of slacks that are free lose history after some arbitrary timeframe (used to be 10,000 messages, now I think its 90 days). Plus you can connect Discord to your Steam/Playstation/Xbox account, which gamers like.
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upvoteby WorldMaker2 hours ago|
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Relatedly, the "gamer-oriented" business model of sell cosmetics and subscriptions to every user individually rather than the Slack big enterprise-oriented business model of a central admin paying an entire per-user cost out of pocket was a factor in many of my communities moving from Slack or skipping Slack. It's a lot easier for a small community admin to start for free and find enough "Boosts" from community membership for the nice-to-have server features that cost a bit extra than to foot the entire bill themselves in the hopes that enough users will eventually reimburse them. (It also allows for a hybrid where a community admin centrally pays for some amount of boosts, but doesn't have to pay for all of them.)
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upvoteby inetknght7 hours ago|
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> 99.99% of slacks that are free lose history after some arbitrary timeframe (used to be 10,000 messages, now I think its 90 days).

This is exactly the reason cited for several non-gaming discords I'm in.

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upvoteby trinsic23 hours ago|
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Yeah I was concerned back when it first started rolling out. Years later the gaming community embraced like it was the second coming of Christ. Nobody looks at the people and organization supporting these platforms. If I remember correctly, wasnt funded by major conglomerates in the entertainment industry?

I guess thats changing though, I see Youtubers all over the place now watching these things like a hawk. Referring to the Highguard scandal.

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upvoteby verdverm8 hours ago|
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Slack sold out, changed the deal, and threw every small group under the bus. Most of those people ended up on Discord
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upvoteby takoid7 hours ago|
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To answer how it got so big: it didn't start out trying to replace Slack. It just solved an acute pain point for gamers. Skype was becoming increasingly enshittified, and people were floating between TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, and Mumble, none of which were that great. Discord captured the market because it was completely free and had the audio mechanisms in place to make people with shitty mics and background noise tolerable without forcing everyone to use push-to-talk. That’s really it. By the time non-gaming communities were looking for a Slack alternative, they just defaulted to Discord because 90% of their target audience already had the client running in the background.
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upvoteby fernandopj6 hours ago|
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That is also why I think it "won" over Slack. Discord solved audio comms for gamers, period. It got so good, that SMB and startups started to migrate for stuff like easy pair-programming, open meetings etc.

Discord IMO won because of a killer trio: 1) good comms 2) full history 3) faster UI over bloated Slack.

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upvoteby dbg314157 hours ago|
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> Can someone explain to me how Discord got so big in the first place, particularly for non-gaming uses?

It won by simply building a vastly superior product during its growth phase.

For gamers, it replaced fragmented, clunky, or paid alternatives (TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype) with a frictionless, free app that had excellent voice quality and modern UX.

It worked so perfectly for gaming communities that non-gamers inevitably took notice, realizing it was effectively a better, free version of Slack for community building.

But that was the user-acquisition era. Now, we're seeing the classic enshittification phase.

Every other notification badge is an alert trying to sell you something. I still use it, but the product development focus seems to have entirely shifted to selling $9.99/month "blinky bullshit." I understand they have to monetize eventually, but it's exhausting.

Ultimately, it got big because for a few years, it was undeniably the best, cleanest chat client on the market. It was just relentlessly good for the user.

Whether it stays good, or follows down the Microsoft path of turning into a full-on ad-distribution network remains to be seen. But right now, despite all the crap sales, it's still pretty good... (=

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