🎆 Launched: How Discord Dominated Gaming

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

On its face, Discord looks a lot like Slack. It’s organized into Servers -- each community’s space -- and within each server, there are Channels, including Voice Channels, in which users can also choose to turn on video for up to 25 people. Voice channels can be always on, and users can drop in and drop out casually, like hopping onto a couch with ... See more

Companies that attach themselves to a specific game early in their development process run the risk of being shut out by publishers or becoming niche products unable to break into other games. Some of today’s most successful gaming companies such as Twitch or Discord can attribute much of their success to being game-agnostic.

Midjourney has rapidly become one of the most popular servers on all of Discord, with 2 million members. This has thrust text-to-image AI into the mainstream, which was all part of the plan for Midjourney’s founder David Holz. Holz told The Verge last month (in an excellent interview worth reading in full): “A lot of people ask us, why don’t you ju... See more

While Zoom, Teams and others focused on building teleconferencing features — breakout rooms, Q&A, integration with work tools, transcripts, that sort of thing — Discord has continued drilling down on quality and latency.

The difficulty describing itself is core to Slack’s challenges to date, and the idea that once companies start using Slack, they can’t live without it is core to its promise.