If you\u2019re new to Discord, you might be thrown off by the lack of an endless feed peppered with ads. On Discord, all of the action happens in interest-specific servers, and the company wants to make it easier for anyone to stumble across and plunge into those communities.<\/p>\n
The company launched Stage Channels<\/a>, its own Clubhouse-like voice event rooms, in late March. With those building blocks in place, in June Discord will start surfacing events (think open mic nights, book clubs, etc.) through a new portal called Stage Discovery, adding a way for anybody to connect with the cool communities in the process.<\/p>\n Discord Product Manager Rick Ling says Stage Channels are a hit so far, and the company realized that events can be a gateway to introduce new users to the communities at the heart of the platform.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, just dropping in and out of these audio conversations is not the end goal,\u201d Ling said during a press event. Soon, servers will be able to list public events, inviting anybody to come check things out. Discord also says that its new discovery feature will launch with some noteworthy partners, hinting that \u201cone rhymes with\u2026\u2026 rhymes.\u201d (It\u2019s Grimes.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Discord has a few other new features around the corner too. Threaded conversations are on the way this summer and the company is about to begin a pilot program to test paid, ticketed audio events. The latter could be a huge boon for creators, who haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Discord is obviously taking notes from Clubhouse here<\/a> \u2014 live audio event discovery is Clubhouse\u2019s whole thing<\/em> \u2014 but Discord\u2019s deep well of interest-based communities stands to push its own experience far beyond what the newer audio upstart can offer. 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.<\/p>\n Discord doesn\u2019t really need to compete with Clubhouse \u2014 in many ways, it was there first. The company might have cribbed some smart features along with everybody else<\/a>, but Clubhouse\u2019s downloads are falling off a cliff<\/a> and the latter app probably needs to prove it can compete with Discord and more entrenched social networks at this point.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Reddit unveils its Clubhouse clone, Reddit Talk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Stage Discovery is a bit of a departure for Discord. Previously, to check out a live event, you needed to pop into a server first. 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.\u00a0Discord does have some discovery and search functionality \u2014 users can thumb through popular and featured public servers in its Discover tab \u2014 but historically it\u2019s been relatively basic. But by expanding the \u201cdiscovery surface,\u201d Discord is likely to attract a lot of people who either haven\u2019t heard of the app or think it\u2019s just a voice chat utility for gamers.<\/p>\n Discord\u2019s new discovery feature will show up in the home tab, offering a directory of live voice events. The feature\u2019s 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. 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\u2019t connected to.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, this is still really a window into communities and how to join communities,\u201d Discord Product Marketing spokesperson Jesse Wofford told TechCrunch. Wofford emphasized that Discord isn\u2019t trying to lure anybody into an endless scrolling loop \u2014 instead the goal is connecting users with the vibrant communities for which the platform is known.<\/p>\n Discord 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. (Discord insists that Clyde is \u201cblurple.\u201d) The company says it wants to keep things playful while making its visual identity \u201cmore inclusive and welcoming\u201d to the kind of people who haven\u2019t been using the app for years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n While a big boost to discovery is on the near horizon, Discord\u2019s product philosophy hasn\u2019t changed. \u201cThere are no feeds, no likes, no way for anything to go viral,\u201d Discord founder and CEO Jason Citron said, adding that Discord was designed with community building in mind from day one.<\/p>\n Discord wasn\u2019t always such a welcoming place. The app has always served gamers, but it was also a haven for white supremacists<\/a>, including the ones who organized the Charlottesville rally that left Heather Heyer dead. 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.<\/p>\n Discord rooted out neo-Nazis<\/a> and other dangerous communities starting in 2017, and by 2021 the company was well-positioned to tell a different story. Now, 15% of the company works on its Trust and Safety team, a group dedicated to protecting users and shaping content moderation policies. The product was built for gamers from the get-go, but Discord has been broadening its horizons recently and started having conversations with users about how it\u2019s helped them fight isolation during the pandemic.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s aspirations ultimately go well beyond the gaming community. Unlike Instagram\u2019s ad-choked social feed or Twitter\u2019s often brain-melting endless loop, Discord remains a joy to use. And all of that user-friendliness doesn\u2019t appear to be a bait and switch either. Revenue from its Nitro premium product and other paid perks are growing fast and the company has no plans for targeted ads.<\/p>\n Discord\u2019s savvy pandemic-era campaign to broaden its appeal to nongaming communities \u2014 musicians, study groups, surrealist fantasy baseball leagues<\/a> \u2014 appears to be paying off. Discord\u2019s user numbers are explosive and it\u2019s been adding sensible new features at a healthy clip. The outlook is good for the company and its users alike, and what a rare convergence that is.<\/p>\n\n
Discord\u2019s next evolution<\/h2>\n
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