How an App for Gamers Went Mainstream

Since the beginning of the pandemic, users of all stripes have flocked to Discord, attracted by its chat features, high-quality audio and video chat, privacy, ability to facilitate direct connections, and, unlike Slack, free servers.

While Mark Zuckerberg believes he is best placed to homestead the metaverse, he may be surprised to find a thriving, indigenous species has already taken hold: Discord. More than any other business, the company is truly “metaverse native,” unwittingly built for the future. First designed for gamers — the metaverse’s pioneers — time has allowed it t... See more

There's not much that Discord does that users strictly can't do elsewhere. On one hand, it's a lot like Slack, blending public channels with easy side-chats and plenty of ways to rope in the right people. It's also a bit like Reddit, full of ever-evolving conversations that you can either try to keep up with or just jump into when you log in. (In f... See more

But five years in, it's clear that Discord has done something remarkable. It's built a space that feels unlike any other on the internet. It's not quite group chat, it's not quite forums, it's not quite conference calling. It's all of those things and none of them. It turns out, in that messy middle, is a place that mirrors what it's like to be hum... See more

Fast-forward a few years, and Discord is at the center of the gaming universe. It has more than 100 million monthly active users, in millions of communities for every game and player imaginable.

Major social platforms today are noisy. People have found refuge in groups (iMessage, Fortnite worlds and group chats). If Facebook is Walmart, tools and communities like Discord (ie:gamers) or Public.com* (ie: casual stock traders) are boutique stores