What’s the disagreement? Chat service strengthens community and goes beyond just playing

Dalilah, a college student, has been watching “The Bachelor” since she was 12, but she didn’t know many people in real life except her mother who also watches the reality show.

That’s why, when she discovered Discord, an online chat service, Delilah decided to start her own Discord server, especially for fans of “The Bachelor” and other dating shows.

A year ago, Delilah usually watched the rose celebrations herself. You now watch each weekly episode with around six to ten friends using it Servant of the nation’s position, celibate Stream the last episode together.

Since launching in 2015, Discord has quickly grown into one of the best places for video game players to meet and interact online, and it’s growing rapidly. Discord has over 140 million monthly active users, up from 56 million at the end of 2019. The company also has 19 million weekly active “servers” – communities with multiple chat, audio and video channels. Discord offers a number of advanced features that bring these servers closer to online communities than simple chat rooms, including real-time audio and video chats, custom emojis, and custom roles that set users apart.

Unlike most mainstream social apps, Discord doesn’t make money from ads. The startup mainly makes money through Nitro, a service that sells Discord for $ 9.99 per month or $ 99.99 per year and which gives users additional features like animated emojis and HD videos.

While Discord is primarily associated with online gamers, Delilah is among a growing number of people creating and joining Discord communities that focus on interests besides gaming. While server Delilah focuses on type of television, other servers target their interests based on regions, sports, memes, dating or investments. 70% of users said they used the app for gaming and other purposes, up from 30% at the start of 2020, according to a company spokesperson.

Delilah Discord was discovered when one of its teachers was teaching there remotely during the Covid pandemic. I used the app, thought it was cool and decided to find out more about it.

“I started using it in school because of Covid, and from there I branched out and saw that you can use it for a lot of different things,” Delilah said, who refused to reveal his full name to protect his identity on the Internet. Regardless of his identity in the real world.

The disagreement gained notoriety in the corporate world in March The Wall Street Journal meldde Which which Microsoft He wanted to buy the San Francisco Corporation for at least $ 10 billion. Discussions with Microsoft would be overUltimately, however, the company announced a dossier Partnership Meet Sony, Which acquired a minority stake in the startup.

Several Discord server officials told CNBC they’ve noticed a slight increase in their communities over the past year, as people try to connect with others while trapped inside. .

An example of this is Server to San Francisco and the Bay Area. This server now has over 2,000 users, most of whom are people who identify as living in the many cities around the San Francisco Bay Area.

The server has been around for about four years now and first started out as an offshoot of the r / SanFrancisco community on Reddit, said Michael, a software engineer and administrator for Bay Area and owner of the Discord server. But the Discord server has grown over the past year to allow people to almost socialize.

“I saw it as some kind of fun jogging hobby, especially this year when there isn’t much to do,” said Michael, who declined to give his real name to keep his identity separate. online.

Michael estimates that he and his supervisors spend around $ 80 a month to run the server. This includes server announcements on Meetup.com as a way to recruit and pay more members for Discord’s Nitro subscription service.

Much of the monthly cost also comes from the group money the mod provides for monthly trivia events, which is one way to bring the community together.

“Something I normally spend a full month putting out and stuff like that covers a whole year of server spending,” he said.

Server admins in San Francisco and the Bay Area also host game nights, where they play games like Ben or Catan, and movie nights, where they show a movie and discuss it in theaters. chat on the server.

With more people vaccinated, some server users are also starting to hold real meetings.

One of the ways the San Francisco & Bay Area server works is by allowing users to configure roles for themselves. Users can choose to indicate which part of the bay they live in, along with the color their username is displayed in: teal for San Francisco, green for East Bay, and yellow for South Bay, to name a few. some.

These unique features are one of the main reasons why many moderators and admins have decided to create their communities on Discord instead of other alternatives, such as Reddit or Slack.

This is the case with David “Tart” Rush and his fellow moderators who built the Fantasy Football Chat server.

Like the San Francisco & Bay Area server, the Rush server was also a branch of the Reddit community. But the Rush server gives fictional football players the ability to have real-time conversations more easily than through comment threads on Reddit.

“You really get the instant feedback that you don’t often get on Reddit,” Rush said. “Someone will ask a question, and then you can start a conversation much easier.”

Real estate agencies Fantasy Football Chat Server He built a number of bots that were able to recognize when server members were talking about specific players and retrieve relevant information, such as the most recent stats or player information on an NFL contract.

These advanced features have helped Fantasy Football Chat attract over 8,000 users since its inception in 2018, but all of this growth has kept Rush and his moderate colleagues busy. In addition to building bots and recruiting fictional experts to do all-ask-me-for-me sessions on the server, Rush and his colleagues also need to modify the server to keep things civilized.

This includes filtering out some specific words and discouraging its members from using audio and video channels, which Rush says is harder to change. More importantly, the mediators implemented a zero tolerance policy for politics because they “realized that every time someone talks about politics, it moves quickly.”

“Obviously we have people chatting about this player and this player, and it can get hot,” Rush said. “But as long as they don’t look for people and call them by names, maybe we’ll let him fly.”

With these barriers, Fantasy Football Chat has become more than a hobby for Rush, other moderators, and many server members. While they discuss fantasy football as their main topic, the server-side rooms allow them to build relationships beyond their common interests.

“It’s much easier to make friends on our server,” he says. “Some people get to know each other really well here, and you can really connect that person with each other. This is something that I really appreciate.

In terms of functionality, Slack is the most similar app to Discord, both acting as closed spaces where users can talk to each other via text, voice or video messages through different chat rooms.

However, Discord offers its users more customization tools, and the fact that it doesn’t position itself as business software makes the app look more like a bar or cocktail bar. than a conference room.

This is exactly the kind of feeling that Hurl, a San Francisco player, was looking for when building his properly titled server. Smash Pub.

Hurl is a fan of the fighting game “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ”, a Nintendo title that appeals to all ages. Hurl wanted to create his own dedicated server for the game, but he intentionally didn’t want young players hanging around. So the waiter came up with a bar function to attract older players who also enjoy beer while playing while discouraging younger players who don’t bond.

“Smash is packed with many different ages,” said Hurl. “A lot of people tend to say, ‘Can I please join your server, I’m not going to be boring’, and I’m like ‘OK’. “

Smash Pub is home to unique artwork of the pub’s suspended game characters, and the many chat rooms have names that match the theme, such as “general-cantina”; Taproom side chat rooms where users can only share memes, selfies or catharsis; And the Barcarde audio channels where users can relax and play other video games.

Hurl’s approach to his servant quickly paid off. The server has grown to over 2,100 members since its launch in August 2020.

As more regions of the United States reopen, more people may resume the offline activities they did before the pandemic, but these Discord server managers say they’re not concerned about it. the impact this could have on their online communities.

While many of them have grown during quarantines and lockdowns, many are confident that the communities they have built will remain centers of socialization. This is Michael’s take on the San Francisco & Bay Area server as he sees more of his members meet in person after their first meeting on Discord.

Michael said: “We see it happening naturally which is really cool. People always seem to care about the community and the relationships that exist here. “I am optimistic that this will hold up as things continue to open up.”