How Discord (Somewhat Accidentally) Invented the Future of the Internet

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

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.

Roberto Blake, an Atlanta-based YouTuber, compared Discord not to Slack but to “chat rooms from the 1990s.” But, he told me, “they made that experience mobile and way more robust and sophisticated.” In a social-media landscape organized around reverse-chronological feeds, profile pages, default public content, and follower counts, Discord is palpab... See more

Discord is not just a communication platform, it’s a hidden world.

If Twitter is the internet’s town hall, Discord is its hidden network of comfortable lounges, dingy basements, and smoke-filled back rooms. It’s where companies and DAOs are built, bonds are formed, schemes are hatched, alpha is leaked, and fortunes are won and lost. We spend more of our lives in cozy classrooms, crowded restaurants, and friends’ l... See more