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From the game Lianmai tool to the free community, what are the possibilities of Discord in the future?

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Discord: "Where you chat, where you play."

Original title: "Game Lianmai, a large project with a valuation of 3.5 billion"

Original source: GeekPark

Rhythm note: Discord, some users literally translate it as "discord channel". From the Lianmai tool to the community with more than 100 million monthly active users, it is open, friendly, and convenient. Discord has gradually penetrated into the lives of Internet users. As far as the encryption field is concerned, if any encryption project lacks Discord on social channels, it can be said that this project lacks the "soul potion" that condenses users. Like the "WeChat" in China, Discord has become a place where everyone can speak freely and follow up on the latest developments of the project at any time.

How did Discord develop into what it is today? I hope this article can give you a little idea.

It's hard for you to describe what Discord is in one word. It can be instant messaging software, voice call tool, interest community, paid community...it is the sum of all these, and it is creating a new Internet social form.

Discord has been around for a long time.

As early as 2018, it has swept the game circle and become the most popular "voice Chat Tools". In the US server of "League of Legends", before the start of almost every game, someone will send a Discord channel link, inviting teammates to communicate through Discord instead of using the game's built-in voice tool.

Discord does not rely on any recommendation and matching algorithms, and does not assign any labels to users. All channels are created and managed by users themselves. This is a community that grows naturally through word of mouth. Today, it has more than 100 million monthly active users.

At the same time, Discord is still "out of the circle". More and more "non-player" users come here and establish "study groups", "origami clubs", "sneaker discussion groups"...

From voice chat tools to gamer communities, Discord It seems that a new Internet social form is being created. It heralds a whole new future that is more ideal than reddit or Facebook.

From "connection" to "space"

The birth of Discord is inseparable from games.

Its co-founder and CEO Jason Citron is an avid gamer. During college, he almost failed to graduate because he was addicted to the online game "World of Warcraft". But it was also out of love for games that Citron learned programming and joined the game development industry after graduating from college.

In 2012, Citron, who tried to develop a variety of games and suffered repeated setbacks, realized that the games he developed were not very good. The chat system is relatively the most valuable. He separated the chat system from the game and decided to devote himself to the development of this chat software. And thus, Discord was born.

Discord co-founders Stan Vishnevskiy (left) and Jason Citron (right) | Discord

The most mainstream voice chat software on the market at that time was Skype. The core logic of Skype is to bring the “calling” experience online, and the product design revolves around the behavior of “dialing”. Such a product logic is not suitable for gamers, because the core requirement of gamers is "temporary" multiplayer voice, and it is best to join quickly without "adding friends" or "creating groups" first.

So Discord established the logic of "channel-centric" very early on. This is very similar to the YY voice in China. All communication revolves around "channels", and each channel is like a room. You only need to send out the invitation link, and other people can enter the room with one click and start voice chat.

Discord puts a lot of effort into optimizing call quality and network latency. On reddit, many players said that the reason why they are willing to use Discord (rather than the built-in voice in the game) is mainly because of Discord’s call quality, better experience, and more complete functions.

Most voice call software establishes a "connection" between users. If one party hangs up the call, the "connection" will be broken. Discord is different, it creates a "space", no matter who joins or who leaves, this space has always been here.

Mechanisms like this retain users and encourage them to engage in more follow-up communications. You join other players' channels, if you can chat well, you can permanently join this channel, use your mobile phone to text chat with everyone, and play together next time. You can see what games other people are playing in the channel, and watch live broadcasts of games shared by other players.

This kind of communication that started with games has extended into a more complex online social relationship.

Discord The server is a place that only invitees can enter. Users can chat with the community or friends, play games and entertain, or set up text channels in different categories according to the things they like to discuss to customize the server ;| Discord

Many Discord users will jump to an empty voice channel when they are bored, which is equivalent to telling others "I'm here, want to chat?" Others can join in if they are interested. For those who want to chat, but are "ashamed" to take the initiative to call friends, Discord provides an easier way to initiate communication, and they don't need to bear too much social pressure.

Including Facebook and Snapchat, most social media have designed a gamification system, trying to drive and even control user behavior. Likes, concerns, and chatting with friends for more than a week can "light up the friendship boat". These things prompt users to continue to use social media to share content, comment and interact, but they bring more and more pressure to users .

Discord is completely different.

Although it was born out of a game, it has almost no gamification design. Here, there is no concept of "fans" and no news flow recommended by algorithms. It’s like a house, you open Discord, it’s like “laying on the beanbag at home after school, waiting for friends to come and play something together”.

Some players call the channel he created with his friends "base".

From "Tools" to "Community"

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Because it has the gene of the game in its bones, Discord gives users the greatest freedom.

Just like many games allow players to modify the game content through mods, Discord has opened up a large number of interfaces on the basis of ensuring the core experience and security, so that developers can easily Connect various services to Discord's platform. At the same time, Discord has also done a lot of relatively "complex" functions in order to meet the diverse needs of users.

Compared to other voice software, Discord is by no means the most "easy to use" one. Its product form is closer to Slack, which is a communication and collaboration software developed for professionals to meet the needs of enterprises, with a higher learning threshold and more complex functions. Discord believes that most gamers also have a similar spirit of "studying". You give more functions and greater freedom, and they will explore the most suitable way for them to use.

It is true. In Discord, there are some large channels with a large number of people, and the design is very complicated.

These channels have their own "welcome flow" that directs new users to different sub-channels. Different channels have different speaking rules and permissions, which can maintain the speaking order and display appropriate information in the case of a large number of people. Managers of some channels have also designed and developed chatbots and some automation tools, which can automatically reply to users' questions and implement some chat applications, such as identity verification, voting, and small games...

During the epidemic, similar software such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams mostly used the idea of "starting from demand" to make products, focusing on providing some very specific functions. Zoom’s quiz function for online class scenarios, and the “custom video call background” function developed for home office scenarios.

But Discord is thinking about how to optimize the product from the bottom, Give users more "possibilities".

Video chat is a new feature of Discord, and it seems to be the right time to launch it in such a special period | Discord

< Vishnevskiy, co-founder of p>Discord, said that they have been mainly studying technology recently, trying to allow 1,000 people to make voice calls at the same time, and provide users with more powerful tools.

If the Discord channel is a house, its many extended functions are equivalent to giving users the possibility to "decorate" the house according to their own ideas. The houses are gradually connected into a "community".

Since 2017, more and more channels based on interest tags have emerged. Including F1 racing cars, mechanical keyboards, sneakers equipment, origami, fan animation, virtual idols...

Many people have also started to operate fan communities through Discrod, including some YouTuber vlogger and consumer brand. Digital vlogger Linus Tech Tips has nearly 90,000 members on its channel, which averages 40 percent online each night. Nvidia also runs a channel with close to 40,000 people.

"A country of 100 million inhabitants"

However, as the community continues to expand, Discord is under increasing pressure on content management.

Traditional communication software is mostly private, and the user's speech in the communication process is private, not disseminated, and does not require management. But Discord is different. When the channel is created, it is public by default. Anyone can join through the link, which has natural communication and growth. As for those large channels that gather tens of thousands of people, they are more like a "public place", and the communication between users is very easy to cause disagreements or even disputes.

When you put a certain scale of users into a space, communication will turn into arguments, which will eventually turn into chaos and breed hatred. And because there are a large number of young gamers in Discord's user base, the related risks are multiplied.

Around 2017, many racists from the anonymous forum 4chan established a series of channels advocating extreme racism on Discord. They would use names like "Kool Kids Klub" to disguise themselves. The name literally reads "Cool Kids Club," but is actually a reference to the apartheid, white supremacist Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s.

In the early days, Discord was unwilling to manage too much user speech. After all, this is a communication tool with semi-private attributes. As long as you don't take the initiative to join those servers, you won't see those comments. But starting in 2017, Discord began to see itself more as a public platform. It formed a dedicated "trust and safety team", delineated a series of clearer rules for speaking, and increased investment in content safety management.

Although Discord has added more rules to restrict users than before, it still requires a large number of auditors to review and control sensitive information and content | Discord

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The team leader Sean Li said, "Discord is like a country with 100 million residents, and there will be different states and towns underneath. What we do is mainly on a large scale Formulate rules to manage this society. At the same time, provide more tools for channel administrators to help them establish more specific rules and ensure that they can be implemented.”

Management system was quickly established. Today, most Discord channels will display detailed speech rules in a prominent position, which generally include "no incitement, hate speech" and "no spam". Some channels even declare what language is mainly used here to prevent the influx of a large number of foreign language users from disrupting the original normal discussion.

Discord also provides channel managers with many tools to counter negative information. For example, Discord allows anonymous registration, but the channel manager can set it to verify the phone before speaking. Discord has also developed some automated management tools, which can automatically screen speeches with suspicious keywords, accept user reports, and then gather this information for administrators to review and deal with offending users. Moderators can mute them for a period of time, or kick them from the channel entirely.

Realization, and the further future

The turmoil of public opinion is gradually subsiding, and a bigger problem is also emerging-how to realize Discord.

Although Discord is still in a period of rapid growth, it just received 100 million US dollars in financing this summer, with a valuation of 3.5 billion, but the pressure on operating costs has gradually emerged. It is not cheap to provide high-quality voice and video calls and live game broadcasts for 100 million users.

Both co-founders said that they will not follow the example of most social media and sell user data and advertisements for profit. Discord's current main source of income is the membership value-added service Nitro. For a monthly fee of $10, users can get a series of "privileges": including support for animated avatars, using more emoji emoticons, 1080P live broadcast, and uploading larger-sized files. But these features have relatively limited appeal to most ordinary users.

Before this, Discord also tried game publishing. In 2018, Discord launched a game store, Discord Store, to sell PC games, but the response was mediocre and it closed a few months later. Later, Discord also tried Nitro Games, which uses a subscription system. Like Netflix, users pay a fixed monthly fee to play games in the entire game library, and it didn’t last long.

At present, Discord has launched Nitro membership value-added services, but these functions seem to have limited appeal to ordinary users | Discord

< p>Although Discord's own road to monetization is full of hardships, some users have already made a pot of gold on Discord.

Some paid content communities began to appear on Discord, covering a wide range of fields, including game guides, investment and financial management strategies, school courses, and social media-derived paid content fan base.

Many content creators choose to develop audiences and influence on YouTube and Twitch, and then monetize them on Discord. Discord has all the product features they need: this is a semi-private community, which can easily manage the membership of paying users; different self-channels can be set for different members; it supports almost all media forms: text, voice, shared files , Live broadcast...

Because Discord is comprehensive and open enough, many people choose to use it to build fan communities and clubs. But because of this openness, it is difficult for Discord to get involved in these businesses, and most people receive money through Paypal. Discord and paid content platform Patreon have functional integration, and creators can connect their members on Patreon to Discord, but this does not bring any income to Discord.

During the epidemic, Discord also ushered in a good growth. From February to July, the number of users increased by 47%. This figure obviously cannot be compared with the growth performance of mainstream voice software such as Zoom, but it must also be considered that before that, Discord has been positioned in the vertical field of games, and the home page contains a large number of complex function introductions and a large number of game "stalks".

So Discord followed the trend and carried out a brand transformation during the epidemic. Introduced a new tagline: "Your place to talk and hang out." (Your place to talk and hang out).

This is already how users use Discord. During the epidemic, some students moved their entire school life to Discord: using Discord to take online classes, set up study discussion groups, and play games with friends after class...

Throughout the development process of Discord, every evolution is not the result of intentional design. Most of the time, this company is optimizing the underlying technology, giving the possibility of the product to users, and letting users explore their own usage methods.

It builds an Internet space that is very close to the real society, where people can interact with each other in the most natural way. You don't have to worry about fans and likes, and your attention won't be controlled by algorithms.

It is difficult for you to describe what Discord is in one word, it can be instant messaging software, voice call tool, interest community, paid community...it is this The sum of everything is creating a new Internet social form.

At the end of June, after redesigning the homepage and targeting a wider audience, two Discord co-founders published an article, writing: "Obviously , people are spending more and more time online, and they hope to find a sense of belonging and real humanity in cyberspace.”

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