In a not-so-distant past life, dangerous far-right extremism thrived on Discord, even as the company largely avoided the bad headlines that slammed more mainstream social platforms for facilitating hate.ĭiscord rooted out neo-Nazis and other dangerous communities starting in 2017, and by 2021 the company was well-positioned to tell a different story. The app has always served gamers, but it was also a haven for white supremacists, including the ones who organized the Charlottesville rally that left Heather Heyer dead. “There are no feeds, no likes, no way for anything to go viral,” Discord founder and CEO Jason Citron said, adding that Discord was designed with community building in mind from day one.ĭiscord wasn’t always such a welcoming place. While a big boost to discovery is on the near horizon, Discord’s product philosophy hasn’t changed. (Discord insists that Clyde is “blurple.”) The company says it wants to keep things playful while making its visual identity “more inclusive and welcoming” to the kind of people who haven’t been using the app for years. Wofford emphasized that Discord isn’t trying to lure anybody into an endless scrolling loop - instead the goal is connecting users with the vibrant communities for which the platform is known.ĭiscord is also celebrating its sixth birthday by sprucing up its brand a little, brightening its color scheme and making a few tweaks to its apparently beloved anthropomorphized little purple controller dude, Clyde.
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“At the end of the day, this is still really a window into communities and how to join communities,” Discord Product Marketing spokesperson Jesse Wofford told TechCrunch. Users will be able to see voice events at which their friends are hanging, events that servers they belong to are hosting and other live events that they aren’t connected to. The feature’s real promise is that those events can bring new users into the fold, connecting them to thriving communities that have a lot more going on beyond events. But by expanding the “discovery surface,” Discord is likely to attract a lot of people who either haven’t heard of the app or think it’s just a voice chat utility for gamers.ĭiscord’s new discovery feature will show up in the home tab, offering a directory of live voice events. Because the platform is so community-based, people interested in a topic, say a particular Twitch streamer, often hop directly into those servers from elsewhere. Discord does have some discovery and search functionality - users can thumb through popular and featured public servers in its Discover tab - but historically it’s been relatively basic. Previously, to check out a live event, you needed to pop into a server first. Stage Discovery is a bit of a departure for Discord. Reddit unveils its Clubhouse clone, Reddit Talk The company has a five year head start and universal brand recognition with young people: most of its 150 million monthly active users are the 18-24 year-olds who comprise a big chunk of Gen Z. The latter could be a huge boon for creators, who haven’t been able to make money through the platform previously, and an important extra revenue stream for a platform that has no plans to get into the targeted advertising game.ĭiscord is obviously taking notes from Clubhouse here - live audio event discovery is Clubhouse’s whole thing - but Discord’s deep well of interest-based communities stands to push its own experience far beyond what the newer audio upstart can offer. Threaded conversations are on the way this summer and the company is about to begin a pilot program to test paid, ticketed audio events. Discord also says that its new discovery feature will launch with some noteworthy partners, hinting that “one rhymes with…… rhymes.” (It’s Grimes.)ĭiscord has a few other new features around the corner too. Soon, servers will be able to list public events, inviting anybody to come check things out. “For us, just dropping in and out of these audio conversations is not the end goal,” Ling said during a press event.