What Is Discord?
Discord is a instant messaging and digital distribution platform. This platform allow the users to communicate using voice calls, video call, and text messages. Here users can share media and files in private chats. Discord runs in Windows, macOS, Android, ios and Linux.
Communities in Discord are called “Discord Servers”. These Servers are filled with various channels. Users can discuss and coordinate whatever they want in these channels. A single user can join maximum of 100 servers. Public ones can be accessed via a link. But private ones are subject to invites and approval. The maximum number of channels for any given server is 500.
Discord is also integrated with YouTube, Spotify, or GIPHY. Users can share third party contents. You also can directly chat with each other.
Now Discord has over 100 million monthly users. The increment of users is shown in the figure below.
History of Discord
Jason Citron developed the Discord first. He developed a gaming platform called OpenFeint and sold to GREE n 2011 for US$104 million. He started a game development studio investing this money.
In the process of game development, they have to face certain difficulties on running both online games and voice over IP software. This led developers to develop a chat service with a focus on user friendliness with minimal impact to performance. The chat service came as Discord.
Discord was publicly released in May 2015 under the domain name discordapp.com. According to the developers they have not targeted any specific group.
In January 2016, Discord raised an additional US$20 million in funding including an investment from WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia sold their shares when it was shut down.
Microsoft announced in April 2018 that it will provide Discord support for Xbox Live users. Discord users were able to connect with Xbox Live accounts as a result of this agreement.
At the beginning, Discord’s motto was “Chat for Gamers”, but when they climb the ladder, they decided to change their motto as “Chat for Communities and Friends”
In April 2020, Discord’s Twitter username was changed from @discordapp to @discord. Later in May 2020, Discord changed its primary domain from discordapp.com to discord.com
How Does Discord Make Money?
As previously mentioned, Discord’s products are free to use. The company can attract more user as a result of this approach.
Discord turned into revenue model after few years. In 2017, Discord introduced Nitro packages. All the processes planed by Discord did not success. The company shut down its merchandise store, in which it was selling Discord-branded clothing, two years after operation.
For now, Discord generates revenue from three distinct sources of income, which we’ll detail below.
Nitro
Nitro is a subscription package offered by Discord. The price rage from $49.99 to $99.99 per year. The cheaper package is called Nitro Classic. These packages can be tested fee of chare for first 30 days. These packages are similar to Netflix models.
Premium features include:
- Personal profile, including custom tags
- Creating your own custom emojis
- Getting two server boosts and a discount of 30%
- Ability to upload files of up to 100MB
- High-resolution videos
- Screen sharing
- Discord Go live streaming
Game Sales
Discord launched own game store in 2018. This allows the Nitro subscribers to access exclusive games such as Dead Cells or Into the Breach. This was not succussed as they expect.
Then Discord changed their business model with participating other game developers. The developers can sell their games through servers. But the developer needs to verify servers first.
Discord may charge 10% attending fee for each sales.
Server Boosting
Server Boosting allows a community to up the functionality and performance of their Discord Server. Servers can be boosted to three different levels.
These server boost may cost $4.99 per month. Nitro subscribers may receive 30% discount for the boost.
The premium features apply for everyone that is part of the server, whether they are paying for the boost or not.