Discord app, a world of itself. The new world of UX
3 innovation and digital news in 1 minute. Every Monday. Episode 285
News 1. A hidden champion called Discord
In 2022 Discord has grown to a powerhouse that has an influence on tech and design. It hosts millions of gamers, techies and more and more people outside the primary target group. In July Discord will be 10 years old. Discord has been funded and is a companion to gaming with links to game stats and bots. The organisation in groups, called servers is seen today as precursor. Opinion: Channel (server) organisation, in strict rule, in privacy, in linking to other resources like bots, in building an own ecosystem. Discord is closer to Slack or Teams than to Facebook. And we all have learned to work in Slack and Teams. The barrier to access Discord today is low. Open for everybody.
Discord has always been on our radar, but today with an own server.
News 2. The land of bots
Bots are everywhere in Discord. They can be understood as an “app” to automate small tasks, not the large conversational bots. They take over tasks in the community, the group — called server. There is a dedicated ecosystem around building bots for Discord. Botghost is one of them. One can build bots by drag and drop (nocode) with 5 minutes. Typically a help and Q&A bot but also linking to game bots. Opinion: Botghost typically provides with 20 modules like moderation, search, links to other apps like Twitter, trivia out-of-the-box, weather. And stats from Fortnite or Apex Legends.
Discord also has a developer platform to run customised bot development.
News 3. Discord, a solid finance board
Discord is still a private company, in start-up mode. It has been having an official Chief Financial Officer for a year only (he came from Pinterest). The financing of Discord is very solid, with VC invest and on secondary market. In total nearly 1 billion USD ($984,5m). And with 240 million users and two subscription modes — the numbers are all on green! Opinion: Investment came from Dragoneer (largest investor), Greylock, Greenoaks, Index Ventures and more. Not tier-one investors like Sequoia or Softbank, but steady and solid. Sony Entertainment is an investor, a small one ($3.3m) but the gaming company has a “foot” in Discord.
Discord is very quiet about the investors, a sign things run very well financially.
Author is the research team (10 trend scouters) at specialist Space and Lemon Innovations (Hamburg, Berlin) — scouting innovations in main tech geographies, AI development, virtual worlds and e-commerce. Excerpts of research are gathered here in original weekly news since 2016, always with an opinion — no re-write of TechCrunch.
Come back next Monday and share your opinion.
