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> It is easy to switch to Discord. Inviting people is two clicks and a paste. Joining a server (once you have an account) is two clicks. This is kind of missin

> It is easy to switch to Discord. Inviting people is two clicks and a paste. Joining a server (once you have an account) is two clicks. This is kind of missing an elephant in the room. Because even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. Put in an username and you're good to go. This might look particularly weird to some of the HN community who are fond of optimizing the conversion rate of their pointless landing page -> sign up flow and like to subscribe people to mailing lists that 97% of their users will find fucking annoying. I've been doing a similar thing to discord on a site I run where users don't even have to choose a name. They get a randomly assigned name which they can change later if they want. A new user needs to perform 0 clicks to begin using the product. This was especially helpful in the beginning, because the first few people who stumbled upon the site immediately became users and started interacting with each other. By adding stupid landing pages, sign up flows, analytics (which then requires me to get permission from my users), and whatnot the site probably wouldn't have gotten off the ground half as fast.

jscheel 6y ago
100x this. It's so annoying to join a slack channel. Discord feels much more free-flowing, like IRC (yes, yes, I know).
- trophycase 6y ago
  Slack also makes no sense. I need a different login for different channels?
  - Nuzzerino 6y ago
    The upside of doing this way for Slack is that it's one way to not expose your account ID to every member in every channel you're in, the way that Discord does. Better for privacy compliance.
    - reportgunner 6y ago
      You can still have multiple accounts on Discord to achieve the same separation if you want.
      - Nuzzerino 6y ago
        From another comment: > Sure, you can make a brand new account, but that's easier said than done, because: > 1) You can't be logged into two accounts at the same time on the desktop. You must use different browser profiles or a similar sandboxing method. Definitely out of the question for mobile. > 2) No way to transfer your old servers, friends, roles, etc, to a new account. > 3) Making a new account isn't always a reasonable option even if you are willing to lose all of your old data. Moving from one role to another to another in a gaming career often is done gradually through connections and community (but that doesn't imply you should have to be forced to expose your system username and user id to everyone everywhere). > 4) Even if you do make a new account, that new account might get disabled automatically until you provide a phone number. Throwaway numbers don't work.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    Slack is huge in the corporate world more than a gaming or casual chatting tool and I assume separating identity / login credentials between different channels makes some sense in that case for both security and privacy reasons, but also just conceptually.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    It makes sense for versatile use cases. Discord's single account system is maybe fine for gaming but it's pain for other use cases.
will_pseudonym 6y ago
It's been a long time since I was a new user to Discord, so I didn't remember what steps I had to take to get started. The process you described sounds super similar to the low friction involved with getting started on IRC!
mustaflex 6y ago
This. it feels like entering a room, speaking with like-minded people, getting the information you want and walking out. No one asking anything and trying to reel you back in after.
guzik 6y ago
Seconded. We've made a product in fitness&health niche when all of our competitors (and so we did) think it's essential for users to create an account, fill long questionnaires etc, yet we managed to skip all those things making them optional. Conversion rate skyrocketed on iOS - now we are making same switch on Android app.
- coherentpony 6y ago
  Oh my god that sounds wonderful. Can I ask what the product is called? I'd like to check it out.
  - guzik 6y ago
    You can check it out here: aidlab.com/market/aidlab It's an app for our wearable (but our wearable is also optional, haha). As said: account is no longer required on iOS, but we are also working on that feature on Android as well.
    - coherentpony 6y ago
      Thanks!
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I'm using the same strategy for my very first product. I noticed the competitors ask way too much information when first signing up. Unfortunately for my product it's not possible to do away with sign ups entirely, but I think I can get close.
mrtksn 6y ago
I don't understand why people even ask for account creation. Now days the devices are personal, you don't have to have accounts to be identified, they are only good to sync between devices(like multiple devices and account restoration). Especially with apps, the moment you install the app you have your details there for good and they don't go away accidentally like with the browsers. I assume it's about tracking but now I'm beginning to suspect that it's simply a cargo cult mentality where no body asks why are we doing this. I don't proceed with anything that requires a form to be filled without having a good reason. I'm actually positive that I have a bank account that doesn't have a login info, when I need to sign in from another device I would simply scan a barcode from the app to let me in. Yet, there are apps asking me more questions than an immigration officer to let me use it.
- julienb_sea 6y ago
  To be fair, I think there are some smart app developers clueing on this. I've sank pretty significant hours into some mobile games without ever creating a proper account. I only created an account once I cared enough to not lose the data. This is super smooth mobile UX especially for consumer facing apps, primarily those which have no immediate need at all to be cross platform.
  - ivanagas 6y ago
    Duolingo is one that stands out for this.
- mcherm 6y ago
  > I'm actually positive that I have a bank account that doesn't have a login info I don't know where you are, but in the US it is actually illegal for a bank to offer financial services without collecting a significant amount of personal data from the customer. This exists for a few reasons but I think the most significant one is that the government does not want to give up the ability to block financial transactions for those they deem unacceptable. (Like terrorists.)
  - mrtksn 6y ago
pm90 6y ago
So. Much. This. For non technical users, the friction involved in setting up new accounts is a bit too much. Anecdotally: my tech-handicapped friends all used hangouts. I suggested discord, but everyone wanted to continue using something they were familiar with. Once they did get Discord and discovered how easy it was to start conversations.... nobody went back to hangouts.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Not anymore unfortunately, at least not reliably. I picked it because of this ease of use, but I was forced to enter and verify an e-mail before it let me use it. And they reject mailinator.
- thehermit 6y ago
  Unfortunate side effect of their success. Most bigger servers I'm on require having a verified account otherwise all you can see is a single message asking you to verify.
- chmod775 6y ago
  I tried this in a private tab just before writing my response. It asked me for an username and a date of birth to make sure I'm 16. It will then bug you to "claim" your account (add e-mail address etc.), but you can already use discord normally.
  - nsajko 6y ago
    Guess what happens if you don't claim your account long enough?
    - tenryuu 6y ago
      I used an unclaimed account for almost four years, only issue of course I had was dealing with guilds limited account based on verification. There was really no other problems
- heydabop 6y ago
  That's a per-server controllable setting. The admins can set it such that only users with a verified email (and phone number if they desire) are able to send messages.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
    Yes, but if you create a new account and the risk algorithm flags you I think you may still be required to verify regardless of the server setting. Maybe that was also because I started by signing up instead of following an invite link (not sure about that).
n3dm 6y ago
>Because even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. Put in an username and you're good to go. What are you talking about? I've tried to create an account before it and would not let me without giving them a non-voip phone number. YMMV should be included in that statement.
- anaisbetts 6y ago
  This is a non-default per-server setting, the admins chose to enable this
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    Its a fairly logical anti spam method. If its a private discord server for your friends there is no need but if the invite link is public then the anti spam protection becomes pretty important.
    - anaisbetts 6y ago
      I agree!
- merb 6y ago
  actually this is the default on creating a new server: https://support.discord.com/hc/user_images/p4prIch_rOOP4zr7MRzzRw.jpeg https://support.discord.com/hc/user_images/p4prIch_rOOP4zr7M... German Picture: https://imgur.com/a/qYLf7On https://imgur.com/a/qYLf7On so if you join servers with the default setting you won't be asked for anything. most bigger communities need a validated email tough.
  - Nuzzerino 6y ago
    No, he was referring in fact to account creation. I have been unable to create an account without a non-voip phone number at times.
- 6y ago
hardwaregeek 6y ago
I run a small mentorship program for students. We use Facebook Messenger for all of our communication. This is despite quite a few valid complaints (privacy, not everybody has Facebook, lack of custom rooms, etc). Why? Well currently the onboarding process is this: person expresses interest, person gets added to Messenger group. With another platform, it becomes person expresses interest, we give person a form to create an account. The difference is push versus pull. Facebook is nobody's favorite platform and yet it's the one most people have.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  Maybe Facebook is nobody's favorite platform because it's the one most people have.
- giraj 6y ago
  It's great that you're offering a mentorship program, but I would have been one of those students complaining. In a business setting I understand the need to optimize onboarding, but in an educational setting I think inclusiveness should rank higher. In our student organizations (at university) we've settled on Teams, which is what's available through our university accounts. I'd guess most universities have an equivalent, but let me know if I'm wrong. This has the benefit of requiring no sign-up, and separating work and personal life. If you're talking about HS students, then I'd be surprised to hear that they're unwilling to install your preferred chat app to join the program.
  - hardwaregeek 6y ago
    You bring up some good points. I could use something like GChat, although idk if that works with my school's GSuite setup. That being said, I've tried spinning up chat apps like Slack/Rocket/etc. and faced serious issues. A. Nobody checks Slack. In the beginning everything's great and people are engaging on slack, but after a few weeks engagement drops off. B. The number of people without Facebook has been precisely 1. If there were more people without FB accounts, I'd 100% consider another option. C. Begrudging use is better than no use. It's not that students are boycotting my program because they have some hatred of Slack. It's more that they're confronted with a form, which they put off and then forget to do.
simonw 6y ago
I've seen all sorts of problems with services that don't require a validated email address in the past. Seems like a great idea... until a few years down the line you run into an issue for which you need to send a message to your users. And you can't. These are often legal issues. Needing to forward on take-down notices, changing privacy laws (remember all of the emails that were sent out when GDPR came into effect). Legal issues aside, the killer challenge is account recovery. People forget their passwords. How are you going to give them back access to their account without a verified communication mechanism?
- ivanagas 6y ago
  Discord often solves this by showing an alert when you login. Product updates and other news often shows up there. You have to close it to get into the app. The mindset around account recovery would be: if you value your information in your account, add an email. Otherwise, you can start again if you lose it. Doesn't work in all situations.
nsajko 6y ago
This is quite wrong. To log in to Discord, I have to provide my e-mail address, be logged into a Google account (because of reCAPTCHA), and possibly even open my mail box to confirm to Discord that I am, in fact, me. This is the Web experience at least, on mobile they presumably already have all of this (or the equivalents) right after installing their app. EDIT: to add to this, I once created a Discord account associated with a fake e-mail. After a while they presumably figured that out, but instead of, e.g., letting me log in and change the e-mail, they just locked me out.
- brobinson 6y ago
  You're talking about the login flow. OP is talking about onboarding. Go to discord.com right now, click "Open Discord in your browser", enter a random username, and hit enter.
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    That's a pretty recent change though. Not long ago they used to require a non-temporary email, often a phone number (no prepay phone numbers allowed, ruling out most of many countries), and maybe a bunch of captchas to top it off.
    - flxy 6y ago
      I actually remember this being a thing back in 2015-16 when they first launched and before the "boom" happened. Back then it was only possible when you actually got an invite from somebody to join a server though, if I remember correctly. But back then there was no official way to browse more or less public servers, which is the case now. I guess to join those it might be good enough in their eyes to just create a temporary account to let users test the waters and hopefully later convert into a proper account.
    - Talanes 6y ago
      Are you sure you weren't just trying to join a server that required extra verification? My first experiences with Discord, years ago, were exactly the same as the new user experience now, except they seem to be running out of unique digits for some common names.
ivanagas 6y ago
You're right. Even I underestimated the impact of the one click to join. I don't remember the last time I joined a community or Slack where I had to enter a bunch of info, but I see in my Discord a bunch of servers I've joined because it is so easy.
Aaronstotle 6y ago
Yep, if you demo an app and you require a sign-in, you should re-think the demo.
layoric 6y ago
It is a pretty smooth process but my partner got stuck in a failure mode due to removing friction like confirming email before you can start engaging with the app. A typo in the email and a password manager failing to save the generated password. This problem wasn’t noticed for days while chatting in various communities, when it was, even though their phone was still authenticated, no option but to abandon the account was available. I’m sure it is a pretty small percentage of users this impacts but I think confirming an email address as real before allowing access avoids this wasted sunk cost and probably more importantly to small communities, avoiding troll accounts/harassment.
- summm 6y ago
  Why does that app not allow to change an unconfirmed email? This is the design failure, not that it doesn't let it be confirmed right away
  - layoric 6y ago
    I believe it does allow this, but it required reauth which the password was lost and could not be reset since it was the wrong email.
Evidlo 6y ago
> No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. Put in an username and you're good to go. Not for me. I was forced to give away my phone number to create an account.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  The point is you don't have to create an account.
young_unixer 6y ago
> a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username While that's good, it would be better if they added an option to "log into an existing account". I created 3 different discord accounts that way. There was no way to realize that I was creating a new account rather than just creating local name for an existing account.
j1dopeman 6y ago
I just tested this on android and it requires an email and password to register - no getting around that. It also asks for my birthday. Then it forces verification by either email or phone. I wish it was just enter a username and go. Edit: this was for an invite on a server I control and allows unrestricted access. It is not a server requirement; it is a discord requirement.
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
>an username Oozername
zamalek 6y ago
> Because even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. I also want to add: you don't have to install a thing either. I played a few games that heavily encouraged community coordination and still remember people backing out of VOIP because of the download ("I'll do it when I log off" and then never do). In addition, because of a central API, users can be authenticated with in-game/game account info and automatically assigned a role, instead of sitting about waiting for an admin. Discord removes every barrier of entry possible. > to mailing lists that 97% of their users will find fucking annoying. This lets you measure engagement. Discord trusted their product enough to know engagement would happen.
loosetypes 6y ago
Any good resources you’d recommend for reading further on this approach?
asdff 6y ago
for most discords you do need a verified email to chat.
ehnto 6y ago
That has been my onboarding ethos too when it makes sense, if they need an account at all. On one app that did require an account, a user can use the app up until the point they need to save something, which is when I take their email address and password and then they are in. Email is only for password resets. But I don't think I will even require that by default in future. Perhaps a prompt that the user can add their email address just in case they forget their password, but not require it.
petre 6y ago
Jitsy Meet is even easier to set up, no account required. Just visit a web page, create a channel/meeting and you're good to go. I love it compared to Zoom which is quite annoying. The audio is also better. No idea why everyone uses Zoom, most meetings are less than 10 people. I also hear it on news channels in interviews since the pandemic, robotic Zoom voice.
- henriquemaia 6y ago
  I've used Jitsi throughout the pandemic for all of my university's meetings where I have a say in the platform. I'm highly pleased with it. From all other platforms I've tried, Jitsi is the saner, offers more freedom and is more inclusive (no account needed). As an educator, platform inclusiveness ranks very high on my criteria for choosing which way to go.
whiddershins 6y ago
Lots of stuff used to work this way I think. Anyway, that’s great. Do this. Maybe more people can do this.
s1k3s 6y ago
We've spent weeks debating whether to ask users to create an account or not for our app. Going for no auth would've decreased our development costs by a lot, while also increasing conversion because once installed you'd get right into using all the features. But then we realized people abuse the service (it's a B2C SAAS that's free for the C side) and we need a way to ban the abusers from using the platform. Going for auth impacts everyone because you have to provide (and verify) your info to us, and this translates to 99% of the users being impacted by the other 1% who will not play by the rules. Sure, you can blame companies for not coming up with smarter options for eliminating the abusers that hurt everyone else, but when we're offering a free service without asking for anything back from your side I find it hard to justify investing months of development into this. And this is why you create an account with your email or phone number, and if you make the life hard for everyone else you go out of the platform and let everyone else enjoy it peacefully.
- sobani 6y ago
  Isn't a new email address basically free? So any abuser would have to spend just an insignificant amount of time to create a new account?
Osiris 6y ago
How does the user log back in from a other device?
neop1x 6y ago
> even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. That's how I ended up with three Discord accounts with no way to merge them and I am not alone [1]. [1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360053130931-Allow-the-merging-of-discord-accounts https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600531...
- reportgunner 6y ago
  Well it's still trivial to join[0] to all servers from one of those accounts and delete[1] the other two AFAIK. [0]I acknowledge that if you're in some private servers where inviting is disabled you might need mods to create an invite for your primary account [1]I haven't tried to delete my discord account recently
discreditable 6y ago
There is something magical about this onboarding flow. Discord join links make it very easy for outsiders to hop in. My introduction to Discord was playing League of Legends several years ago. People would send links to their voice channels so teams could communicate. I clicked and voice chatted (in my web browser no less!). After doing that a few times I felt Discord was pretty cool so I registered and installed the Desktop client.
xgbi 6y ago
THIS. This morning I left my daughter at home until noon. Not knowing how to stay in touch with her 'just run case', I tried to set up a Google Meet that I could join at work to see what she was up to. Cue 15 minutes of: - trying to create a meet without an account => fail. - use my account to create a meet, take link, pull it up on daughter's computer. - need to create account for daughter on Google so that she can join. - creation of children account requires me to login because children not >18. - create family with my account. - back to creating account for child. - strong password entered. - google requires a payment setup, picks up my credit card (??) from my account to add to daughter's account. - cannot dismiss payment option, stuck there.. Then I thought about Discord: - Go to Discordapp.com - Click on "open app", enter chilren first name, server is created - copy paste link to my computer and go to children server - Done This is just fantastic. I just abhor the user story on anything else now, this is just so easy, and solves so many issues.
laurentb 6y ago
I was curious and surprised you didn't link to your site at all so I looked at your submission history and I believe you're referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6670113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6670113 ? This links to https://volafile.org/ https://volafile.org/ which I have to say is pretty damn awesome as a concept! Simple yet effective. curious why you didn't choose to charge a fee for registering an account in the end? Are you monetizing the service in any way? I assume hosting files up to 20GB doesn't come for free right?
jmnicolas 6y ago
I like the concept but how do you manage malicious users though?
nashadelic 6y ago
We've come full circle back to IRC: no registration required, guests get a guestXYZ generated username.

jscheel 6y ago

100x this. It's so annoying to join a slack channel. Discord feels much more free-flowing, like IRC (yes, yes, I know).

trophycase 6y ago
Slack also makes no sense. I need a different login for different channels?
- Nuzzerino 6y ago
  The upside of doing this way for Slack is that it's one way to not expose your account ID to every member in every channel you're in, the way that Discord does. Better for privacy compliance.
  - reportgunner 6y ago
    You can still have multiple accounts on Discord to achieve the same separation if you want.
    - Nuzzerino 6y ago
      From another comment: > Sure, you can make a brand new account, but that's easier said than done, because: > 1) You can't be logged into two accounts at the same time on the desktop. You must use different browser profiles or a similar sandboxing method. Definitely out of the question for mobile. > 2) No way to transfer your old servers, friends, roles, etc, to a new account. > 3) Making a new account isn't always a reasonable option even if you are willing to lose all of your old data. Moving from one role to another to another in a gaming career often is done gradually through connections and community (but that doesn't imply you should have to be forced to expose your system username and user id to everyone everywhere). > 4) Even if you do make a new account, that new account might get disabled automatically until you provide a phone number. Throwaway numbers don't work.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Slack is huge in the corporate world more than a gaming or casual chatting tool and I assume separating identity / login credentials between different channels makes some sense in that case for both security and privacy reasons, but also just conceptually.
- fomine3 6y ago
  It makes sense for versatile use cases. Discord's single account system is maybe fine for gaming but it's pain for other use cases.

will_pseudonym 6y ago

It's been a long time since I was a new user to Discord, so I didn't remember what steps I had to take to get started. The process you described sounds super similar to the low friction involved with getting started on IRC!

mustaflex 6y ago

This. it feels like entering a room, speaking with like-minded people, getting the information you want and walking out. No one asking anything and trying to reel you back in after.

guzik 6y ago

Seconded. We've made a product in fitness&health niche when all of our competitors (and so we did) think it's essential for users to create an account, fill long questionnaires etc, yet we managed to skip all those things making them optional. Conversion rate skyrocketed on iOS - now we are making same switch on Android app.

coherentpony 6y ago
Oh my god that sounds wonderful. Can I ask what the product is called? I'd like to check it out.
- guzik 6y ago
  You can check it out here: aidlab.com/market/aidlab It's an app for our wearable (but our wearable is also optional, haha). As said: account is no longer required on iOS, but we are also working on that feature on Android as well.
  - coherentpony 6y ago
    Thanks!
Kaze404 6y ago
I'm using the same strategy for my very first product. I noticed the competitors ask way too much information when first signing up. Unfortunately for my product it's not possible to do away with sign ups entirely, but I think I can get close.

mrtksn 6y ago

I don't understand why people even ask for account creation. Now days the devices are personal, you don't have to have accounts to be identified, they are only good to sync between devices(like multiple devices and account restoration). Especially with apps, the moment you install the app you have your details there for good and they don't go away accidentally like with the browsers. I assume it's about tracking but now I'm beginning to suspect that it's simply a cargo cult mentality where no body asks why are we doing this. I don't proceed with anything that requires a form to be filled without having a good reason. I'm actually positive that I have a bank account that doesn't have a login info, when I need to sign in from another device I would simply scan a barcode from the app to let me in. Yet, there are apps asking me more questions than an immigration officer to let me use it.

julienb_sea 6y ago
To be fair, I think there are some smart app developers clueing on this. I've sank pretty significant hours into some mobile games without ever creating a proper account. I only created an account once I cared enough to not lose the data. This is super smooth mobile UX especially for consumer facing apps, primarily those which have no immediate need at all to be cross platform.
- ivanagas 6y ago
  Duolingo is one that stands out for this.
mcherm 6y ago
> I'm actually positive that I have a bank account that doesn't have a login info I don't know where you are, but in the US it is actually illegal for a bank to offer financial services without collecting a significant amount of personal data from the customer. This exists for a few reasons but I think the most significant one is that the government does not want to give up the ability to block financial transactions for those they deem unacceptable. (Like terrorists.)
- mrtksn 6y ago

pm90 6y ago

So. Much. This. For non technical users, the friction involved in setting up new accounts is a bit too much. Anecdotally: my tech-handicapped friends all used hangouts. I suggested discord, but everyone wanted to continue using something they were familiar with. Once they did get Discord and discovered how easy it was to start conversations.... nobody went back to hangouts.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

Not anymore unfortunately, at least not reliably. I picked it because of this ease of use, but I was forced to enter and verify an e-mail before it let me use it. And they reject mailinator.

thehermit 6y ago
Unfortunate side effect of their success. Most bigger servers I'm on require having a verified account otherwise all you can see is a single message asking you to verify.
chmod775 6y ago
I tried this in a private tab just before writing my response. It asked me for an username and a date of birth to make sure I'm 16. It will then bug you to "claim" your account (add e-mail address etc.), but you can already use discord normally.
- nsajko 6y ago
  Guess what happens if you don't claim your account long enough?
  - tenryuu 6y ago
    I used an unclaimed account for almost four years, only issue of course I had was dealing with guilds limited account based on verification. There was really no other problems
heydabop 6y ago
That's a per-server controllable setting. The admins can set it such that only users with a verified email (and phone number if they desire) are able to send messages.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Yes, but if you create a new account and the risk algorithm flags you I think you may still be required to verify regardless of the server setting. Maybe that was also because I started by signing up instead of following an invite link (not sure about that).

n3dm 6y ago

>Because even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. Put in an username and you're good to go. What are you talking about? I've tried to create an account before it and would not let me without giving them a non-voip phone number. YMMV should be included in that statement.

anaisbetts 6y ago
This is a non-default per-server setting, the admins chose to enable this
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  Its a fairly logical anti spam method. If its a private discord server for your friends there is no need but if the invite link is public then the anti spam protection becomes pretty important.
  - anaisbetts 6y ago
    I agree!
merb 6y ago
actually this is the default on creating a new server: https://support.discord.com/hc/user_images/p4prIch_rOOP4zr7MRzzRw.jpeg https://support.discord.com/hc/user_images/p4prIch_rOOP4zr7M... German Picture: https://imgur.com/a/qYLf7On https://imgur.com/a/qYLf7On so if you join servers with the default setting you won't be asked for anything. most bigger communities need a validated email tough.
- Nuzzerino 6y ago
  No, he was referring in fact to account creation. I have been unable to create an account without a non-voip phone number at times.
6y ago

hardwaregeek 6y ago

I run a small mentorship program for students. We use Facebook Messenger for all of our communication. This is despite quite a few valid complaints (privacy, not everybody has Facebook, lack of custom rooms, etc). Why? Well currently the onboarding process is this: person expresses interest, person gets added to Messenger group. With another platform, it becomes person expresses interest, we give person a form to create an account. The difference is push versus pull. Facebook is nobody's favorite platform and yet it's the one most people have.

Denvercoder9 6y ago
Maybe Facebook is nobody's favorite platform because it's the one most people have.
giraj 6y ago
It's great that you're offering a mentorship program, but I would have been one of those students complaining. In a business setting I understand the need to optimize onboarding, but in an educational setting I think inclusiveness should rank higher. In our student organizations (at university) we've settled on Teams, which is what's available through our university accounts. I'd guess most universities have an equivalent, but let me know if I'm wrong. This has the benefit of requiring no sign-up, and separating work and personal life. If you're talking about HS students, then I'd be surprised to hear that they're unwilling to install your preferred chat app to join the program.
- hardwaregeek 6y ago
  You bring up some good points. I could use something like GChat, although idk if that works with my school's GSuite setup. That being said, I've tried spinning up chat apps like Slack/Rocket/etc. and faced serious issues. A. Nobody checks Slack. In the beginning everything's great and people are engaging on slack, but after a few weeks engagement drops off. B. The number of people without Facebook has been precisely 1. If there were more people without FB accounts, I'd 100% consider another option. C. Begrudging use is better than no use. It's not that students are boycotting my program because they have some hatred of Slack. It's more that they're confronted with a form, which they put off and then forget to do.

simonw 6y ago

I've seen all sorts of problems with services that don't require a validated email address in the past. Seems like a great idea... until a few years down the line you run into an issue for which you need to send a message to your users. And you can't. These are often legal issues. Needing to forward on take-down notices, changing privacy laws (remember all of the emails that were sent out when GDPR came into effect). Legal issues aside, the killer challenge is account recovery. People forget their passwords. How are you going to give them back access to their account without a verified communication mechanism?

ivanagas 6y ago
Discord often solves this by showing an alert when you login. Product updates and other news often shows up there. You have to close it to get into the app. The mindset around account recovery would be: if you value your information in your account, add an email. Otherwise, you can start again if you lose it. Doesn't work in all situations.

nsajko 6y ago

This is quite wrong. To log in to Discord, I have to provide my e-mail address, be logged into a Google account (because of reCAPTCHA), and possibly even open my mail box to confirm to Discord that I am, in fact, me. This is the Web experience at least, on mobile they presumably already have all of this (or the equivalents) right after installing their app. EDIT: to add to this, I once created a Discord account associated with a fake e-mail. After a while they presumably figured that out, but instead of, e.g., letting me log in and change the e-mail, they just locked me out.

brobinson 6y ago
You're talking about the login flow. OP is talking about onboarding. Go to discord.com right now, click "Open Discord in your browser", enter a random username, and hit enter.
- ubercow13 6y ago
  That's a pretty recent change though. Not long ago they used to require a non-temporary email, often a phone number (no prepay phone numbers allowed, ruling out most of many countries), and maybe a bunch of captchas to top it off.
  - flxy 6y ago
    I actually remember this being a thing back in 2015-16 when they first launched and before the "boom" happened. Back then it was only possible when you actually got an invite from somebody to join a server though, if I remember correctly. But back then there was no official way to browse more or less public servers, which is the case now. I guess to join those it might be good enough in their eyes to just create a temporary account to let users test the waters and hopefully later convert into a proper account.
  - Talanes 6y ago
    Are you sure you weren't just trying to join a server that required extra verification? My first experiences with Discord, years ago, were exactly the same as the new user experience now, except they seem to be running out of unique digits for some common names.

ivanagas 6y ago

You're right. Even I underestimated the impact of the one click to join. I don't remember the last time I joined a community or Slack where I had to enter a bunch of info, but I see in my Discord a bunch of servers I've joined because it is so easy.

Aaronstotle 6y ago

Yep, if you demo an app and you require a sign-in, you should re-think the demo.

layoric 6y ago

It is a pretty smooth process but my partner got stuck in a failure mode due to removing friction like confirming email before you can start engaging with the app. A typo in the email and a password manager failing to save the generated password. This problem wasn’t noticed for days while chatting in various communities, when it was, even though their phone was still authenticated, no option but to abandon the account was available. I’m sure it is a pretty small percentage of users this impacts but I think confirming an email address as real before allowing access avoids this wasted sunk cost and probably more importantly to small communities, avoiding troll accounts/harassment.

summm 6y ago
Why does that app not allow to change an unconfirmed email? This is the design failure, not that it doesn't let it be confirmed right away
- layoric 6y ago
  I believe it does allow this, but it required reauth which the password was lost and could not be reset since it was the wrong email.

Evidlo 6y ago

> No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. Put in an username and you're good to go. Not for me. I was forced to give away my phone number to create an account.

jobigoud 6y ago
The point is you don't have to create an account.

young_unixer 6y ago

> a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username While that's good, it would be better if they added an option to "log into an existing account". I created 3 different discord accounts that way. There was no way to realize that I was creating a new account rather than just creating local name for an existing account.

j1dopeman 6y ago

I just tested this on android and it requires an email and password to register - no getting around that. It also asks for my birthday. Then it forces verification by either email or phone. I wish it was just enter a username and go. Edit: this was for an invite on a server I control and allows unrestricted access. It is not a server requirement; it is a discord requirement.

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

>an username Oozername

zamalek 6y ago

> Because even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. I also want to add: you don't have to install a thing either. I played a few games that heavily encouraged community coordination and still remember people backing out of VOIP because of the download ("I'll do it when I log off" and then never do). In addition, because of a central API, users can be authenticated with in-game/game account info and automatically assigned a role, instead of sitting about waiting for an admin. Discord removes every barrier of entry possible. > to mailing lists that 97% of their users will find fucking annoying. This lets you measure engagement. Discord trusted their product enough to know engagement would happen.

loosetypes 6y ago

Any good resources you’d recommend for reading further on this approach?

asdff 6y ago

for most discords you do need a verified email to chat.

ehnto 6y ago

That has been my onboarding ethos too when it makes sense, if they need an account at all. On one app that did require an account, a user can use the app up until the point they need to save something, which is when I take their email address and password and then they are in. Email is only for password resets. But I don't think I will even require that by default in future. Perhaps a prompt that the user can add their email address just in case they forget their password, but not require it.

petre 6y ago

Jitsy Meet is even easier to set up, no account required. Just visit a web page, create a channel/meeting and you're good to go. I love it compared to Zoom which is quite annoying. The audio is also better. No idea why everyone uses Zoom, most meetings are less than 10 people. I also hear it on news channels in interviews since the pandemic, robotic Zoom voice.

henriquemaia 6y ago
I've used Jitsi throughout the pandemic for all of my university's meetings where I have a say in the platform. I'm highly pleased with it. From all other platforms I've tried, Jitsi is the saner, offers more freedom and is more inclusive (no account needed). As an educator, platform inclusiveness ranks very high on my criteria for choosing which way to go.

whiddershins 6y ago

Lots of stuff used to work this way I think. Anyway, that’s great. Do this. Maybe more people can do this.

s1k3s 6y ago

We've spent weeks debating whether to ask users to create an account or not for our app. Going for no auth would've decreased our development costs by a lot, while also increasing conversion because once installed you'd get right into using all the features. But then we realized people abuse the service (it's a B2C SAAS that's free for the C side) and we need a way to ban the abusers from using the platform. Going for auth impacts everyone because you have to provide (and verify) your info to us, and this translates to 99% of the users being impacted by the other 1% who will not play by the rules. Sure, you can blame companies for not coming up with smarter options for eliminating the abusers that hurt everyone else, but when we're offering a free service without asking for anything back from your side I find it hard to justify investing months of development into this. And this is why you create an account with your email or phone number, and if you make the life hard for everyone else you go out of the platform and let everyone else enjoy it peacefully.

sobani 6y ago
Isn't a new email address basically free? So any abuser would have to spend just an insignificant amount of time to create a new account?

Osiris 6y ago

How does the user log back in from a other device?

neop1x 6y ago

> even creating an account on discord after clicking a "join server" link only requires you to put in an username. No pointless e-mail requirement, not even a password, no nothing. That's how I ended up with three Discord accounts with no way to merge them and I am not alone [1]. [1] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360053130931-Allow-the-merging-of-discord-accounts https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600531...

reportgunner 6y ago
Well it's still trivial to join[0] to all servers from one of those accounts and delete[1] the other two AFAIK. [0]I acknowledge that if you're in some private servers where inviting is disabled you might need mods to create an invite for your primary account [1]I haven't tried to delete my discord account recently

discreditable 6y ago

There is something magical about this onboarding flow. Discord join links make it very easy for outsiders to hop in. My introduction to Discord was playing League of Legends several years ago. People would send links to their voice channels so teams could communicate. I clicked and voice chatted (in my web browser no less!). After doing that a few times I felt Discord was pretty cool so I registered and installed the Desktop client.

xgbi 6y ago

THIS. This morning I left my daughter at home until noon. Not knowing how to stay in touch with her 'just run case', I tried to set up a Google Meet that I could join at work to see what she was up to. Cue 15 minutes of: - trying to create a meet without an account => fail. - use my account to create a meet, take link, pull it up on daughter's computer. - need to create account for daughter on Google so that she can join. - creation of children account requires me to login because children not >18. - create family with my account. - back to creating account for child. - strong password entered. - google requires a payment setup, picks up my credit card (??) from my account to add to daughter's account. - cannot dismiss payment option, stuck there.. Then I thought about Discord: - Go to Discordapp.com - Click on "open app", enter chilren first name, server is created - copy paste link to my computer and go to children server - Done This is just fantastic. I just abhor the user story on anything else now, this is just so easy, and solves so many issues.

laurentb 6y ago

I was curious and surprised you didn't link to your site at all so I looked at your submission history and I believe you're referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6670113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6670113 ? This links to https://volafile.org/ https://volafile.org/ which I have to say is pretty damn awesome as a concept! Simple yet effective. curious why you didn't choose to charge a fee for registering an account in the end? Are you monetizing the service in any way? I assume hosting files up to 20GB doesn't come for free right?

jmnicolas 6y ago

I like the concept but how do you manage malicious users though?

nashadelic 6y ago

We've come full circle back to IRC: no registration required, guests get a guestXYZ generated username.