“Ay, hop on Discord!”
Chances are you’ve heard that phrase uttered countless times from your dedicated crew of gamer friends. If you’re not a gamer and have no clue what Discord is, however, don’t be embarrassed. Because there’s a good amount of folks out there who also aren’t in the know. Once we break down Discord’s importance and relevance to today’s virtual conference-focused approach to communications, you’ll want to get involved ASAP.
Discord is categorized as a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol), instant messaging, and digital distribution platform. All of those communication features are mainly used to build a wide variety of communities that reach far beyond the realm of gaming. Users can hop into those communities (which are referred to as “servers”) and perform all sorts of communication functions, such as jotting out written messages, participating in voice/video calls, and sharing media and files. Discord is a global community that provides English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, etc. speakers with an online hub to commune, plus it runs on a wide variety of operating systems - Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, iPadOS, Android, and most web browsers. It’s safe to say that Discord’s influence reaches far and wide.
Even though Discord is a great communication tool for career-focused individuals and just everyone in general, it’s become the go-to chatroom for gamers. Console/PC players usually hop onto Discord during group play to maintain a bigger pool of chat room participants. MMORPG players that are looking to tackle massive raids with a loyal collective that works like a well-oiled machine will most likely commune on Discord, for example. Even though non-Nintendo console owners can also utilize their hardware’s party chat features if they so choose, Nintendo Switch owners don’t have that same luxury. But thanks to Discord, a whole party of players that want to talk spicy to each other during a hotly contested Mario Kart 8 Deluxe session can do so. Discord’s also pretty essential for gamers as it gives certain games and streamers their own servers for users to engage in.
Discord’s numbers are quite impressive, to say the least. VentureBeat reported that the company regularly brings in 140 million monthly users, plus it recently raised $100 million at a $7 billion valuation. Plus The Wall Street Journal noted that Discord generated $130 million in revenue in March 2020, which is up from nearly $45 million in 2019. Those gargantuan stats go hand in hand with the big rumor circulating about Microsoft having an interest in purchasing Discord for over $10 billion. If that deal goes through, then Microsoft’s communication infrastructure will get even stronger if it merges Discord and its Xbox Live services together.
It goes without saying that Discord is a pretty major deal. Gamers and non-gamers alike can rely on it to build new friendships, share concepts/ideas, and generally stay in touch with folks from all walks of life. But if you’d rather just use Discord to hop on for some trash talk during an hours-long Team Slayer session in Halo, then that’s totally fine too.
