Discord Explained | What is Discord and how did it grow beyond gaming?

how do you go from building a chat app for games to revolutionizing the future of internet communities discord co-founders jason citroen and stan vishnevsky know the answer over the span of the last few years they saw discord grow from zero to 140 million active users per month while people use their platform to build communities around their interests ranging from street fashion to cryptocurrency but how did this app become the next big thing in communication join us as we break down discord's early growth their pivot beyond gaming and how they are planning to become the go-to place for online communities for more business breakdowns please subscribe to our channel and give this video a thumbs up for those of you who don't know discord is pretty easy to understand founded by jason citron and stan vishnevsky both lifelong gaming enthusiasts discord was originally an app for gamers allowing free voice video and text chat options the original idea behind discord was to help gamers connect with their friends within communities called servers on the platform think of apps like slack and whatsapp discord falls into the same category of communication allowing users to start their own online communities where they could invite their friends to join inside these servers users can set up dedicated channels based on different topics allowing people to find friends based on their interests with features like these it's pretty easy to understand why the app blew up within the gaming community but how did it all start back then people used a variety of apps to talk to their friends during gaming sessions such as skype or teamspeak however citron and vishnevsky realized that these apps were outdated leading to a less than ideal gaming experience so they decided to fix the problem and develop a platform that would allow gamers to move past all of these disruptions the idea for discord came from looking at our own experiences playing lots of online games back around 2014 and sort of noticing that the tools that we were using to play these games were pretty outdated the tools that we were using didn't have good mobile apps you couldn't send pictures to your friends in them and the voice quality we knew could be better and so what we really did was create an all-in-one voice video and text chat app that replaced this constellation of tools that people would use now what most people don't know is that discord emerged from a gaming studio run by citroen and vishnevsky that developed a tablet based multiplayer game with an inbuilt voice function to help people communicate but after realizing that the best part of their game was the inbuilt chat vishnevsky suggested that they focus on building the feature into a product now while this was an ambitious idea at the time citroen and vishnevsky didn't have a lot of competitors because even the most popular gaming servers such as teamspeak and ventrilo had their fair share of issues these apps would ask gamers to rent servers and pay monthly fees they would also have to share their server's ip address and their friends would then have to download the application so let's just say that using these apps wasn't very easy so with discord citron gave gamers a way to solve all their problems the platform featured a clean easy to navigate design along with that it was completely free to use with a desktop client and a web app users could invite their friends with a simple link that could be opened up on any browser making things 10 times easier than they were before want to improve the way you manage your calendar and make it easy for clients to book an appointment with wishpond's appointments tool you can easily schedule appointments and keep your calendar full but that's not all you get a team of marketing experts to work on increasing your sales click the link in the description to learn more discord launched in 2015 and its first set of users came from reddit's gaming communities with the company claiming may 13th 2015 as their official launch day since that's when strangers started using the platform but how did that happen well it started when one of the founders friends shared a server link in the subreddit for the game final fantasy hoping that people would use it to discuss a new expansion to the game once people joined the server citroen and vishnevsky were there to welcome users let them know what discord was all about and listen to their feedback as a result people started going back to reddit talking about how cool discord and its developers were this led to a couple of hundred people signing up for the platform and checking it out this way through word of mouth within the gaming community discord started growing one of the major reasons for the platform's growth was that this was the time when esports and online video gaming streaming via twitch were on the rise but games like fortnite and league of legends had limited communications tools twitch streamers started switching to private discord servers because they were so easy to navigate and build a community thus creating the perfect marketing campaign for the app if you want to learn about how twitch started we've also covered it in a previous video on our channel one of the most iconic moments in discord's growth was when ninja a celebrity streamer played fortnite with the rapper drake and made him download discord in front of 600 000 viewers around 2019 the rise of content creators influencers youtubers instagram meme accounts and celebrities also help the platform grow as they started making their way to discord to connect with their audience and build communities as a result patreon a monetization tool used by creators that allows their fans to purchase paid subscriptions to their content integrated discord into their service in the summer of 2019 discord once again took over the gaming industry when the online multiplayer game among us was launched with its popularity the game was single-handedly responsible for over 1 million people downloading discord to play along with their friends leading the app to reach the number six spot on the us app store and like many other social networks and chat platforms thanks to the peak of the covert 19 pandemic in 2020 discord experienced massive growth as more and more people looked for ways to connect online from february to july 2020 discord's users numbers increased by 47 and the most unusual part was that not all of these people were gamers in fact all they were looking for was a place to hang out with their friends online and with its features discord was the perfect place for them to do that some of the non-gaming communities that have been drawn to discord include retail trading communities that have emerged from the likes of reddit's wall street bets subreddit as well as cryptocurrency enthusiast streetwear fanatics and music lovers in june 2020 having realized that it could tap into a brand new market discord rebranded with a new tagline that read your place to talk which was changed to imagine a place a year later the homepage for the app was also cleaned up making it more inclusive to communities outside of gaming by the end of june 2020 discord had around 300 million users which increased to 350 million by june 2021 but it was only really in the last two years kind of starting in 2019 that we really started seeing people use discord for for more than gaming and it's just accelerated so dramatically over the last year and a half and you know now we have over 150 million people a month that come to discord to you know study homework or you know participate in communities that that they love around topics they're passionate about or just hang out with their friends and you know just do things together online one of the biggest reasons behind discord's explosive growth was that the platform was entirely free with no messaging or call limits while also giving users the option to start their own unlimited servers so how did discord make money then well in 2019 discord introduced nitro their subscription service that costs around five dollars with nitro citron called upon discord enthusiasts to support the platform while also receiving some extra perks such as higher quality streaming and more personalization options this way citron moved away from the idea of selling ads disrupting their user experience today discord nitro offers two plans for 4.99 a month or 49.99 a year or an upgraded one for 9.99 a month or 99.99 annually now more than one million users have subscribed to it and while the company hasn't released any official figures it is estimated that discord generated a revenue of a hundred and thirty million dollars at the end of 2020 but that doesn't mean that discord hasn't had to face any troubles along the way like other social platforms discord has come under fire for letting users post problematic content including hate speech and online bullying now while this happens everywhere on the internet the consequences on discord can be more extreme because of the platform's private communities and relatively small spaces especially with a considerable percentage of the app consisting of teams however once citroen realized that this was a problem he established the trust and safety team which now makes up more than 15 per cent of discourse staff and made discord a founding member of the digital trust and safety partnership a collaboration among tech companies to develop mechanisms for handling inappropriate behaviors online we leave it to to people to decide you know what um is acceptable you know in their space you know in the context of our community guidelines if people encounter content that you know let's say the moderators in a space aren't deleting or is violating our guidelines like we do have a trust safety team full-time employees that people can escalate issues to and because discord is um is not and encrypted although we don't proactively read people's messages if people forward messages to our you know or report content to our trust and safety team we will go investigate and we will action communities that are violating our guidelines another challenge that the company has faced is bigger companies copying its features however with the kind of loyal fan base that discord has managed to cultivate it looks like the company doesn't have to worry about competition for now not just that with the kind of success that the platform has experienced discord has managed to raise over 980 million dollars spread across 14 rounds of funding with their latest funding being raised in september discord is backed by investors such as sony interactive entertainment which says a lot about the company's future potential currently discord has a valuation of about 15 billion dollars thanks to its latest investment round of 500 million dollars while there's been a lot of speculation around citroen selling discord to a bigger company while the company is in its prime according to citroen he's in no hurry to sell this is despite the fact that rumors say microsoft recently expressed interest in purchasing the platform for a total of 12 billion dollars instead discord is expected to go public sometime in 2022 establishing itself as a massive presence in the online communications world the focus of the round is to be able to give us the ability to continue to invest in making just the best community app and services that we can that we can bring to market for people you know from things like um improving you know um our ability to keep people safe you know through an acquisition we made reach recently of a company called centripe to amazing cool new features that allow people to organize how they communicate like threads which allows you to have like branching conversations if you're in a group of people all the way to continuing to invest in our nitro subscription service which is how we make money and and continue to create more value for people through that so what does the future hold for discord after all of this well for now citroen is planning on making the platform more accessible for lesser tech savvy users to open up to a new customer base at the same time discord is also experimenting with new revenue streams helping professional streamers make money through the platform with their stage discovery feature that allows businesses and creators to list their public events recently the musician grimes used the feature to give the people on her server an exclusive teaser for her new song and in the future more celebrities are expected to do the same in addition to that discord is also hoping to go back to its gaming routes by introducing in-house games within the app where users can make small purchases helping the company generate revenue however the biggest step that discord has taken in 2021 has been its partnership with sony that will allow users to connect discord directly to their consoles the feature is expected to launch in 2022 and will help discord establish itself in the console gaming industry born out of the pivot from a game studio discord saw massive growth thanks to solving the communication issues that gamers faced since then this easy to use feature-packed platform has emerged as a tool that's useful to communities beyond gaming helping it grow into a market leader in online communications worth billions that's a wrap for our breakdown of discord do you think it's the future of online communication have you used it to connect with others online let us know in the comments below if you enjoyed this video consider giving it a share and a big thumbs up for more similar stories subscribe to our channel and hit the bell icon see you next time until then bye you

Channel: Wishpond

Views: 15,308

Keywords: Discord, Jason Citron, Start-Ups, Stan Vishnevskiy, Discord Founders, Discord CEO, Discord Bots, Discord Nitro, Discord App, Discord Server, Discord Valuation, Discord Funding, Discord Revenue, Discord Challenges, Discord Growth, Discord Launch, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, discord business, discord money, startups, startups story, discord nitro

Id: G5cjUMPPAiE

Length: 13min 39sec (819 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022