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My group of friends migrated from Messenger to Discord a few days ago, we are very pleased. Here's a list of what I love the most: * When a friend arrived in t
by Biganon 8y ago
My group of friends migrated from Messenger to Discord a few days ago, we are very pleased. Here's a list of what I love the most:
* When a friend arrived in the evening and the others had been talking about random things all day long, the friend was often submerged by the amount of fluff to read. Discord solves this in two ways: 1) the different channels allow us to keep discussions tidy, we have a channel for random discussion, one for our evening plans, one for future holidays, one for music... 2) we can pin (not sure of the name in English) important messages, so the friends arriving later only have to read those.
* The desktop application feels light-weight and fast, even on my weak chromebook. Compared to the memory hog that was Messenger in the browser, it's very pleasant.
* Many fun functionalities such as custom emojis. The emoji panel that opens when you type a colon makes it easier to find the reaction you want to send. I'm aware many on HN don't see the point of emojis, but I find them really fun and useful.
* Bots. Good luck having a bot in a Messenger discussion, with Discord it's trivial.
* The audio discussions are very easy to use and efficient. I love the push to talk mode.
* Muting is fine-grained. You can mute one channel, an entire server,...
* The reactions system makes it trivial to very spontaneously start a little poll. "Where do you guys want to eat? [Letter A emoji] restaurant x [Letter B emoji] restaurant y", and then you react to your own message with both emojis. Your friends just have to click one of the reactions to add theirs, so the little numbers next to each reaction act like a poll counter.
* You can edit your own messages, with no time limit AFAIK. Very convenient, especially with the up arrow which automatically edits your last message.
* Roles are precise and easy to use. We have a role for the core group of friends, with our private channels.
A few drawbacks :
* No quote responses, like Whatsapp has for example
* No attachments larger than 8 MB, which makes it impossible to send even a small video you've shot with your recent phone (unless you decrease the film resolution in your phone's settings I guess)
* I've had a few issues with the Android client, such as receiving a notification for a message, opening the app and the message isn't there. No way to force a refresh, so I have to kill the app and open it again. Might have been caused by battery saving mode, not sure.
* Accessing private messages is not very intuitive. Why do you have to go to the main screen first? I don't have many servers, so I'd like to be able to add my closest friends in the server list on the left of the screen, to access our discussions in one click or press.
* Some clever things are part of the client instead of the server, which would be fine if it were consistent between clients, which it's not. I'm thinking of the +:reaction_here: shortcut to quickly add a reaction to the last message in the discussion. It doesn't work with the Android client.
- shishy 8y agoNice! What are the advantages you see with Discord over Slack for the same purpose (if any)? I figured Slack's been around longer and offers most of these things so I was curious what makes people use Discord over it. FWIW I use both happily.
- Biganon 8y agoI've almost never used Slack, but isn't it more institution-oriented? Can you use it for free with a bunch of friends? I'd be interested in knowing what you prefer in both, since you're using both Also, have you ever tried a free software, decentralized alternative?
- robrtsql 8y agoI'm not who you were talking to, but while Slack was definitely intended for use by businesses, you can create a Slack "team" for free (or at least, that's what I remember). There are limits around free Slack (finite chat history) but it is possible. > Also, have you ever tried a free software, decentralized alternative? Which are you thinking of? I've used Riot before, to see what Matrix was all about. The Riot client was kind of sluggish. Anyways, I suspect the real reason people use things like Slack and Discord is not because it's the best tool for the job but because it's free for them to make a community. Typically, the person who administrates the server/team/community also has to pay a monthly subscription fee or pay to host it on a VPS, so it's only natural that people are flocking to a service which offers to let you do that for free.
- benparsons 8y agoWhen did you last try Riot? Version 1.0 was released last month, and in general Riot performance has improved a lot in the last ~year.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- baobrain 8y ago