27 ms·

Microsoft in talks to buy Discord for more than $10B

410 points by meibo 6y ago

chovybizzass 6y ago
back to irc. its not for sale.
- m-p-3 6y ago
  Or Matrix.
- superdisk 6y ago
  Spin up your own XMPP server with Prosody. I did a week or two ago, and it works pretty well aside from on iOS where the clients really need work.
  - MattJ100 6y ago
    Glad you're liking Prosody! There is a lot of work underway to improve the iOS experience, particularly in the Monal and Siskin projects. Some of the work on Siskin is being sponsored by our other project, Snikket. For all these projects one of the best things you can do right now is simply try them and give feedback, reporting any issues you encounter.
- NDizzle 6y ago
  My exact thoughts.
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  I never left. Freenode is an amazing resource.
  - mattowen_uk 6y ago
    I find existing IRC communities/channels almost impossible to penetrate. The people have known each other for so long, that they are effectively a closed group. And I'm saying this as a person who was a daily IRC user 20 years ago.
oltdaniel 6y ago
The stuff I worry about is, that Discord currently runs in the Google Cloud and that they will require an Microsoft Account in order to Login and Linux Support will be even worse in the future (yes it works great, but Screen sharing overloads everything for X Minutes). I hope Discord will stay Discord, owned by Discord.
ent101 6y ago
I hope it won't suffer the same fate as Skype.
- Loranubi 6y ago
  Or more recently Mixer.
  - meibo 6y ago
    I really don't think this will happen - Discord has hit a sort of "critical mass" that you don't just kill like it happened with Mixer. If anything, I hope they will treat it like GitHub and let them act mostly on their own, while actually improving the service. Recent feature additions point to an Enterprise service they are setting up, so this may be a part of their new strategy while keeping the service accessible to free users despite their crazy operating costs.
    - foepys 6y ago
      Microsoft's strategy with GitHub is very likely to replace their old Azure DevOps (Server) offerings within the next 2-3 years. Then they can cash in on the Windows and mac/Linux crowd at the same time with a single product. The same will probably happen with Discord inside the Xbox ecosystem where they want to rival Steam with their Xbox game pass. Discord is the perfect community to do it with.
  - HenryKissinger 6y ago
    It won't. When Google acquired YouTube, there were similar concerns that the platform would be "corporatized" to death and be replaced. Corporatized, it has been, but its dominance in its marketplace is stronger than ever. Twitch has emerged as a serious competitor for games, but YT remains just as big if not bigger than Twitch in this corner. GitHub and LinkedIn are similarly thriving under Microsoft's wing, without a Twitch-like competitor in sight. Instagram is more popular than ever since it was acquired by Facebook. Discord will be fine. Microsoft has a lot of experience in the gaming space thanks to the Xbox ecosystem of services, and in the online chat room space, thanks to Teams.
jimbob45 6y ago
To be honest, my friends and I just want the P2P reliability of Skype back. MS just ruined the UI and experience so badly that Discord, despite being slower, was preferable. For example, I got hacked on Skype. Already I’m upset because it wasn’t my fault. However, I couldn’t delete the malicious link it messaged to all of my friends because reasons. Instead, I had to contact each individually to tell them not to click the link. It’s a lot of stuff like that where Skype actively worked against its user base on each new release.
- deleted 6y ago
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BoysenberryPi 6y ago
Please don't do this. Microsoft chat services are the absolute worst. I've had to use Skype for years after Microsoft purchased it and it was bad. I have to use Teams for work and it's just abysmal. I don't know why but everything Microsoft touches in this space turns to absolute trash.
- jbm 6y ago
  I have had to move from Slack to Teams. Despite what everyone says about Slack, Teams is much, much worse because of the complex and incomprehensible integrations with Active Directory. I have had invitations to meetings that I can click on and that don't trigger the Teams app. The "Join meeting" button doesn't show up in Firefox, and even in Chrome, I get sucked into a redirect hell. I even have meetings created without the meeting invitation link - despite the meeting having been created within Teams itself. I have resorted to inviting people to Google meets just to get stuff clarified. But it's still better than Azure DevOps.
  - easton 6y ago
    The other thing that sucks about Azure AD and Teams is that if you invite someone from outside your tenant into a meeting and their IT admin has disabled guest login into other tenants (not uncommon in places like banks where they don’t want people leaving credentials everywhere, even if heavily scoped), they will get a cryptic error message and you will never know that they got an error unless they call you out of band and tell you, and by that point you’re probably 15 minutes into the meeting. This was the reason the last place I worked switched to Zoom, since if you invited someone outside the org it just popped up a box asking them for a name.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  I too use Teams at work and I think it's fine. What do you dislike about it more specifically?
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    It just doesn't work? I've tried multiple times on various projects, but "using" Teams on Linux or Mac is a sure way to loose contact with your team. Skype works much better (or at all I guess for me).
kivlad 6y ago
Surprisingly enough this gives it more credibility in my book. I refused to use it for a while until a revenue stream was introduced (Nitro) and still gave me an unsettling feeling with all the data harvesting - I still won't download the desktop app simply because of the information it collects about the games you have installed, without the user's consent. It also feels like there's much less of an inclination of it failing like Skype has, with a high likelihood of joining the Xbox division while keeping the brand.
ffpip 6y ago
Introducing Microsoft Teams for Gamers, a new platform that empowers gamers to get the best out of their gaming sessions. Game, meet, chat, call, and collaborate in just one place. Discord Meet Now is now available in Windows 10 taskbar so you can meet with a simple click. No sign ups. No downloads required. Would you like to try Discord in the new Microsoft Edge, "the browser recommended by Microsoft"?
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  Microsoft may try its hand at integrating Discord within the Xbox ecosystem.
  - leetrout 6y ago
    Needs to happen whether they buy them or not.
  - agilob 6y ago
    oh no
- shermozle 6y ago
  Note that Microsoft Teams for Gamers doesn't work with Microsoft Teams for Enterprise (Linc) or Microsoft Teams for Home (Skype). Microsoft branding is such a clusterfuck.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    What about Skype for Business?
  - Traster 6y ago
    Microsoft software is a clusterfuck. The branding is very clean. It's not the marketing guys' fault that MS bought 3 different solutions to the same problem.
    - TomJansen 6y ago
sheikheddy 6y ago
Microsoft Teams for work/school, Discord for gaming/life (Xbox tie in?), Skype for... what?
- nikolay 6y ago
  Skype and Discord are quite different. My mother uses Skype, she won't use Discord.
- bitreality 6y ago
  Skype for business school case studies on how to destroy a massive lead in video chat and messaging.
  - nikolay 6y ago
    In Eastern Europe, Viber is pretty popular. Also, many telecoms in Bulgaria, for example, don't account Viber data usage towards your quota, so, even people on the lowest tiers get unlimited free video and audio calls. But some offer this for WhatsApp traffic and many mix and match it with Facebook. So, Microsoft really doesn't pay much attention to Skype - it was the most popular service in Bulgaria, but now almost nobody uses it due to these promos.
    - bitreality 6y ago
      I assume those data waivers are set up through deals between the telcos and the companies behind those applications. Microsoft certainly has the resources to arrange similar deals, but they seem to have given up on Skype years ago. Absolutely baffling, especially with the recent valuation of Zoom.
      - nikolay 6y ago
        Yeah, it's all a matter of focus and when their focus is on Teams.
- 1023bytes 6y ago
  Skype has a huge brand awareness, a lot of older people use it.
dyeje 6y ago
Imagine if Twitch had went all in on becoming a Twitch / Patreon platform instead of the failed game store. One stop shop for monetizing and interacting with your communities.
Shadonototro 6y ago
time to find an alternative.. why do they want to buy everything that works? they love destroying things?
- astrange 6y ago
  The MS gaming division is pretty good. GamePass and Minecraft certainly aren't destroyed.
Shadonototro 6y ago
Maybe an opportunity for TeamSpeak to do a big comeback? https://new.teamspeak.com/ https://new.teamspeak.com/
- testcase_delta 6y ago
  I'm a ventrilo man myself
  - tester34 6y ago
    2.1.4?
- f1refly 6y ago
  While I use teamspeak myself and will probably use the new one when it comes out (provided I can still host the server), I don't think they have much of a place in the future because they failed to innovate in time. As the top comment for this article is arguing, Microsoft isn't buying discords shitty js based software or their company for the great culture they might have, they're buying the mainstream teenage communication market. That market isn't interested to switch to a copy of discord where the only perceivable difference is a total lack of users. The only thing teamspeak will achieve with this update is further alienate it's current userbase that stuck with them for various reasons, may that be the familiarity, the native client, the ability to selfhost or the availiable plugins for games like arma. There's no solution to this, they're in a position where the only possible move is to lose.
techdragon 6y ago
While I'm sure this is just their way of validating their current market value after their last cash raise. Assuming its real this might actually be a good thing, at least on the technical front. For all the talent at Discord and their impressive efforts as far as core product... their basically non-existent privacy between users is a disturbing joke, and while I want to be polite, i'm just going to quote myself from a comment on the github issue here. https://github.com/discord/discord-api-docs/issues/1393 https://github.com/discord/discord-api-docs/issues/1393 > I’ll be brutally honest, I am quite disappointed to discover that a service so popular that goes out of its encourage developers to integrate, embed, and build on top of their api, lacks any machine readable API specification for developers. Really, really disappointed > Edit: This shouldn't be funny. How is the discord public api developers lack of respect for the developers who use their api funny? Standards based api specifications makes it easier for everyone to work with their API. Their API documentation isn’t translated, they have no machine readable API specification to make up for the lack of translated documentation for people who speak languages other than English. > I am disappointed because this is at odds with their professed goals of being for everyone. Apparently they are only for everyone if you’re a user/customer. Developers better read English and have enough spare time to implement their api from scratch... And before someone mentions their community libraries, I’d argue that being required to use those to get anything practical done, because the official API isn’t specified well enough to just use directly with standard tools, is just a further disappointment.
ve55 6y ago
What's interesting about acquisitions like this is that the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data, along with the inability for either of those to easily move elsewhere. No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. But users are locked into platforms so heavily and for such long time periods that they themselves give the platform almost the entirety of its value (not to single out Discord, since we all know this is how a lot of acquisitions work in practice). [As an additional caveat, I will add that Discord has definitely built something that its users love, and I don't want to undermine the absurd amount of UI, feature refinement, and scaling work they've done successfully. It isn't negligible, but it is also not >$10B of software engineering.] I've read many discussions where someone says something of the form "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to", and I think upon consideration of this statement that there is something deeply wrong with the way network effects and protocols function on our Internet such that this can even be a common scenario. We really do have quite a crisis of non-interoperability that generalizes towards a complete lack of user control, be it software, hardware, data, or anything in between. With that said, if Microsoft does purchase Discord, it might not be as bad as some foretell. While we can point to something like Skype as a failure, we can also point to something like Github, which has been doing very well post-acquisition, and in my opinion hasn't gotten worse at all. It's quite possible they wouldn't want to profit off of Discord individually, but rather use it as another tool to expand their general ecosystem horizontally. On the other hand, they could also do the exact opposite and start harvesting data and maximizing advertisements en masse, lest my post become too optimistic in tone, since this is still HN. Lastly, remember that this is still just a rumor that various news outlets have picked up on and is nowhere near guaranteed. For those looking for alternatives due to this, or just because they'd like to own their own data for once, I think Matrix is likely to be the best general solution in this product space, both with respect to similar app functionality as well as quality constraints (real encryption, decentralization, FOSS, etc).
- deleted 6y ago
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- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
leemcd56 6y ago
I don’t know how I feel about this. Personally, I would rather Discord to stay independent… but it is hard to pass up that kind of money.
leetrout 6y ago
Reminder: Mumble is fantastic and free. https://www.mumble.info/ https://www.mumble.info/
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Free as in freedom, even
- NDizzle 6y ago
  Most people I know use Discord like IRC during the day. Voice chat if and when they play games. Or big events, like election night or big sporting events. It's not all voice chat all the time.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  No mobile client which makes it pretty useless for a lot of people. I probably use discord on ios more than on pc.
  - stryan 6y ago
    There are multiple Android clients. I think in the past there was an iOS client, not sure what the current status is.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      The iOS client is still in the app store. Not sure whether it works though as the last update is 3 years ago.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  It also has incredibly low latency, which I've found makes a huge difference to conversation quality.
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    So does Discord. Discord is clearly much better than Mumble.
etempleton 6y ago
Discord would be crazy to not take this deal. They could go public, but they have no clear monetization path to ever reach that valuation. For Microsoft, however, it holds incredible strategic importance to their Xbox division. If suddenly the #1 gaming voice and text chat on PC is fully cross-compatible with Xbox and Xbox services it puts Sony at a huge ecosystem disadvantage. When added to the context of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda and their shift in strategy to Xbox as a service it makes perfect sense.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  If they start requiring a Microsoft account to sign in like they did with Mixer then I know a bunch of people will be out, including me. If they treat it like GitHub and let it be it's own thing then maybe I'll stick around. I doubt they're going to treat it like that though because they don't treat gamers like they do devs. Maybe now's a good time for somebody to start building an alternative.
  - etempleton 6y ago
    I wonder. You are right, they would probably force accounts become Microsoft accounts at some point. I think there is also going to be higher public expectations of moderating and monitoring of what is discussed on Discord if Microsoft owns them. That may not be a headache that Microsoft even wants to deal with.
  - shermablanca 6y ago
    There is an alternative, and it's quite good. https://www.guilded.gg/ https://www.guilded.gg/
    - techdragon 6y ago
      The issue is that we are entering a phase where secondary services are adding value on top of discord. Things like Patreon integration for content creators, numerous service specific bots and a growing number of VOIP related integrations (for example https://craig.chat/home/ https://craig.chat/home/) make it harder to consider alternatives as replacements.
rrdharan 6y ago
Kind of interesting given that they passed on Slack for $8B not too long ago... https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an-8-billion-bid-for-slack-will-focus-on-skype-instead/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an...
- meddlepal 6y ago
  Slack is not strategically interesting. They are already eating the enterprise communication market with Teams. Acquiring Slack would basically be a talent and tech hire nothing more... not worth $8B. Discord gives them something gamers know and love and could be paired with Xbox. Gives them a huge competitive edge against Sony, especially if they intend to build a cross-play centric platform between Windows and Xbox.
- ipsum2 6y ago
  Probably passed on Slack due to anti-trust, since Teams + Slack would be owning a large majority share of group chat.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Where's the anti-trust? Imagine if they owned minecraft, tik tok, and discord as planned. Trying to buy off all the teens?
- quantified 6y ago
  What is this “anti-trust” of which you speak? i’ve heard a rumor it was a thing long ago...
- Lammy 6y ago
  > Where's the anti-trust? Consider one of my favorite "stories in two headlines", and extrapolate :) - NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution (2009) https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f... - Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Why, Exactly? (2011) https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/ https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/
guptaneil 6y ago
This is surprising given Discord had 2 fundraising rounds in 2020 alone. If that wasn't to gain momentum for an IPO, then they must just be losing cash very quickly. For MS, the obvious integration point is Xbox Game Pass, but Discord has been busy pushing gamers off their platform for the past year in favor of broader communities. It'll be interesting to see if they reverse course here, or if MS will position Discord as a free community version of Teams. If you're looking for a better alternative, check out Guilded (YCS17) - https://www.guilded.gg https://www.guilded.gg I've heard users say Guilded makes Discord look like Skype, but didn't realize how accurate that would become. Disclaimer: I work at Guilded, but views are my own, etc
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- roselan 6y ago
  I went to the website and my first reaction was literally "wtf is that shit?" Why should I drop discord? Why should I create an account? Why should I download the app and not test in browser? Even at the bottom: > Ready to try Guilded? > It's easy and free. If there is a try, there is a catch. (maybe not but on the web it's implied nowadays) This is not appealing at all. I'm pretty sure the product is good but your "marketing" sounds completely off to me.
- Dracophoenix 6y ago
  Does Guilded allow self-hosted servers and E2EE like Mumble and Teamspeak?
jeswin 6y ago
One thing that Microsoft always messes up (especially with its acquisitions) is the Login. Microsoft apps have the worst login flows I've seen - not only is it inconsistent across sites, it is also slow often requiring many redirects. It may be just me, but the Login experience is an essential one for me.
- chillfox 6y ago
  Yep, Microsoft login experience has been getting worse over the years. The current one I go through for Office 365 is like this: - type in email, click "next" - wait for next page to load - type in password, click "next" - wait for next page to load - 2FA, click "next" - wait for next page to load - click "next"
  - mattmanser 6y ago
    You forgot the subsequent: - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen
    - zo1 6y ago
      Well we all wanted "OAuth", "OIDC" and other related stuff...for privacy! Now we wonder why chat apps can't interoperate, we have walled gardens, Google's killing the open web, and numerous other dysfunctional things going on on the internet that I can't enumerate fully without making it all sound like baseless rambling.
  - rochak 6y ago
    Exactly. Whoever came up with that design couldn’t be more ignorant.
  - kornesh 6y ago
    Reminds me of Elon's quote "product errors reflect organizational errors"
  - LoathsLights 6y ago
ZeroCool2u 6y ago
Ugh, I hope not. If Discord goes the way if GitHub and is down every time Azure is down, it's going to be unusable.
imwillofficial 6y ago
Microsoft is making big moves in the industry, I've never been so stoked to watch them. reply
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
easton 6y ago
I suppose this means Discord for Enterprise is never happening, which stinks because it honestly is the most user friendly out of all of these chat applications with the team-> channel setup. Kind of reminiscent of Basecamp in the project management space, in that respect. Maybe they’ll take some performance and UX cues and add them to Teams (but I’m saying this about the people who decided to make a greenfield chat/collaboration tool and make the file storage backend SharePoint, so, I suppose I’ll just cry)
- chillfox 6y ago
  We used Discord at work for team chat for about a month before upper management found out and dictated that everyone use Teams because it's free as part of Office 365. Discord worked so well for everyone on different platforms and Teams has got so many problems.
  - mojo982 6y ago
    Management never seems to understand anything besides direct dollars. How much time has it cost the company to switch to Teams? It's definitely not zero.
    - easton 6y ago
      Teams also has an SLA and built in policies for retention, search, and auditing, which Discord does not have because it's a free, consumer service. Which is why I desperately want them to make a enterprise version.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  I may be in the minority but Discord has a really confusing UI. It's so different to anything else and all the controls are just sort of thrown somewhere (e.g. user preferences). Slack is much much better in that regard (though not perfect).
idclip 6y ago
RIP Discord?
chillfox 6y ago
Well that would be sad. Discord is so much better than Teams. I hope they don't integrate it with the Microsoft stack.
villgax 6y ago
And do what with it? Shoddy PMs to add Skype/Teams integration or dump Teams all together?
reilly3000 6y ago
Microsoft buys communities. From the 20% Facebook investment to LinkedIn, GitHub, Minecraft, etc they are aggregating and integrating massive, generation defining audiences. Discord is most definitely that for gamers, pandemic teens, and frankly any SMB with foresight. It’s a fantastic platform. It has the same moderation issues that all online communities have, but it generally happens at a server level. It’s very much a fit for their portfolio, and it’s a great time to sell for them. Nitro can’t do that much in sales, but certainly Microsoft will find a way to make money with it.
musicale 6y ago
While on one hand I'm sort of OK to see Discord cash in, and Microsoft seems to have not destroyed github yet..... I really hope Discord won't just be sucked into Teams or turned into an Xbox thing. I also fear that MS Discord might destroy any remote chance of a Discord app on PS5 or Switch.
- tehbeard 6y ago
  > Microsoft seems to have not destroyed github yet While I'm hopeful that they turned a new leaf... I don't think they've held GH as long as they did Skype before they broke that..
  - aerique 6y ago
    Exactly, MS hasn't even gotten started on GitHub yet.
- mattowen_uk 6y ago
  > ..or turned into an Xbox thing. That's exactly what they'll be doing. 'Xbox' is now MSs umbrella term for all their gaming stuff, regardless of platform.
tim44 6y ago
Democratic candidate etc Bloomberg is trying to buy more discord?
dustinmoris 6y ago
Microsoft hasn’t been able to develop a single successful product since Office. It doesn’t matter how many successful businesses Microsoft buys up, if they don’t also start buying talent then they will destroy this one as well.
- ipsum2 6y ago
  Azure seems to be doing well.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    If measured by the suicide rate of its users then yes.
- SahAssar 6y ago
  Office was released in 1990, are you saying that no MS products since 1990 have been successful?
- sandos 6y ago
  I have to say I quite like Teams, and everyone around seems to, too. Although we came from Skype so might not say much. Also I think Planner is nice! :)
IceWreck 6y ago
I'd like to shill on Matrix, (https://matrix.org https://matrix.org) which is essentially a federated and open source Discord like app. Also, kind of modern IRC.
bluecalm 6y ago
Some comparisons full of personal opinions: GitHub 7.5B. This one has terrible UI is 100x easier than Discord from UI and engineering point of view and will open for disruption from Discord like team in the future. It's very easy to imagine much better GitHub. With Discord you can think of many cool features to add but that's about it. It is a pleasure to use and has fantastic UI. Skype - 8.5B 10 years ago for a steaming pile of shit software. LinkedIn - 26b for trivial (in comparison to Discord) software full of dark patterns people don't really like to use. It might just be Microsoft best acquisition. Let's hope they leave the original team in charge and let them continue to work on it. Discord is exceptional but there are still many cool things that can be added to it.
jake_morrison 6y ago
Another success story for Elixir/Erlang. If you are building chat apps with anything else, you are doing it wrong. :-)
- junon 6y ago
  Uh. What? Discord's client is electron. Unless you're referring to their servers. In which case, nice bait.
ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago
lolz get sold :Ð
lprd 6y ago
I really hope in the future that a policy can be set in place that prevents these types of acquisitions (on this scale, specifically) from happening. A lot of my favorite products have been ruined by acquisitions like this, and its clear that Microsoft will follow suite considering their track record.
wideareanetwork 6y ago
Too cheap!
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Microsoft is also heavily using Discord. Eg. the community for c# and Dapper is on it.
nerdponx 6y ago
Ugh. There is no real Discord alternative. Matrix is comparatively lacking in features, tends to be somewhat slow, and is not a platform that any kid can sign up on for free and be chatting on any device within minutes. I hope things will improve with Matrix, but for now I also hope that MS doesn't totally fuck up Discord. Also slightly terrifying are the privacy implications. I never expected privacy with Discord, but now that MS is involved I expect that every interaction with the interface will be tracked, analyzed, and used to target ads at me. And is waiting to be exfiltrated in a data leak.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  I would like to see an easy way to integrate Matrix to existing communities, and i think that is the niche they should be targetting, not standalone matrix servers that come and go. The federated login thing is really not something that web services should be doing, it should be provided by the browser or some public system. I currently use mattermost as discord backup/replacement
- kuschku 6y ago
  Matrix won't run forever (they're also burning through cash right now), and neither will Discord. All these platforms are only "better" than IRC because they're giving investor money away to kids. By the time the VC money is gone, we'll all be back on IRC. And all the effort spent on integrations with platforms that used predatory pricing to destroy competition, could instead have been spent on open protocols.
  - nerdponx 6y ago
    Matrix is an open protocol. The problem with Matrix right now is that it's too difficult to self-host and Matrix-the-organization doesn't have the resources to offer seamless, Discord-like performance on their default/official instance.
  - stryan 6y ago
    >Matrix won't run forever (they're also burning through cash right now) Matrix is an open protocol; it doesn't need a company behind it to continue existing, unlike Discord. If you mean Element (formerly New Vector), are they? I'd believe that they're not raking in the dough or anything, but they've gotten some good government contracts in the past few years so I'd assume they have some money.
sandos 6y ago
But... they have Teams. Why?
corobo 6y ago
Logging into Discord becomes a jump across 12 different domains and even then you're probably not in Discord yet. Also the account you use for Discord is now the same one as the one with all your Azure stuff on it. Yayy. Please Microsoft, ruin more social apps.
- jimmySixDOF 6y ago
  When MS bought Skype and finally merged the IDs with Hotmail and Windows, I was devestated. I had never once changed my password on Hotmail since probably 1996 and it was just a four letter word. So, one day, say 2014, I login to Skype after forever and reset the password but now it also resets the same Hotmail account I used for that Skype ID. I had that password for almost 20 years and bet it was uncrackable since they had stopped allowing less than 4+ digits ages ago. They even scrambled my hotmail's Outgoing user name in the process but whatever - it was just for spam accounts anyhow although I was hopping mad at the time.
  - nightcracker 6y ago
    > I had that password for almost 20 years and bet it was uncrackable since they had stopped allowing less than 4+ digits ages ago. I'm sorry but this is the most absurd thing I've read in a while.
  - corobo 6y ago
    I think we agree on the login-is-a-pain side of things but I strongly believe passwords should be disposable. If I even catch a hint of a password being leaked or insecure I cycle it. I'd hide a 20 year old password in shame haha, no matter how many characters it has
- tonyaiken 6y ago
  Didn’t happen for GitHub or LinkedIn
cblconfederate 6y ago
Is there information about the share of discords that are gaming and non-gaming related?
29athrowaway 6y ago
https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE
matthewfelgate 6y ago
Noooooooooooo. Why must Microsoft buy everything.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
Does the concept of antitrust even exist anymore? Or is this our future: new startups grow for a decade than get absorbed by one of ten monster corporations.
sjg007 6y ago
I have a new Law. Every application expands until it incorporates instant messaging.
fakedang 6y ago
Why is everyone here comparing Discord to Slack or Zoom? Discord is purely a play for MS in its drive into gaming.
kwanbix 6y ago
Is crazy that Microsoft had an app chat for years (Messenger not exactly the same) that basically died and now they are buying another chat app for 10b! Not to forget what a mess they have done with Skype UX.
rswail 6y ago
No one has observed that the talks were between Discord and the head of the Microsoft Xbox division. Xbox can see the direct relevance of the Discord users to its own. Integrating Discord into its ecosystem allows for synergies directly. This is not a Teams/Skype/Lync replacement. The underlying technology might get used eventually, but that would be invisible to the userbases.
varispeed 6y ago
This is the problem with capitalism - company is starting to be getting too big to fail and the rich are looking to exploit it as a storage of wealth and influence. It has no longer a mission to provide value for customers, but to provide value to shareholders while doing everything in its power to keep or increase the value and stifle the competition, so that customers who no longer like the product had nowhere to go. When a company reaches that point it should be ordered to split by law or it should not be allowed to be sold to other company. Another thing that needs fixing is corporate ownership - it should only be possible for individuals to hold shares - as individual will unlikely to have a negative influence as corporate shareholders do.
Apaec 6y ago
How much money does MS have? Can they just buy any innovation they want?
- chet-uk 6y ago
  $14bn on hand per their last earnings report, but any deal like this would be paid for using a mix of MSFT stock plus cash. And yes, at the scale of company we're talking with Microsoft, they can afford any innovation stage company they want.
rdtwo 6y ago
Discord is pretty powerful. It needs a security layer and it can be deployed on a corporate network. It’s much better than Cisco teams or Mattermost. Lots of discord groups that are as organized as company serving 1-2k members
Jan454 6y ago
and there goes another great service and vanishes within a few month from beeing great to unsupported to lost entirely ..
birdyrooster 6y ago
Bombing the Discord interview to be one of the first hires hurt. It was the first time I interviewed for a company that fit my personal interests to a tee but I couldn’t write a web front end from scratch that could do a progressive loading bar before the end of the second interview session. It was embarrassing to be so dependent on my Google tooling that I couldn’t cut it when I was untethered from my work laptop.
- DreamScatter 6y ago
  i guess your comment shows that people who work at google live in a bubble
mmmBacon 6y ago
We have enough consolidation. I’d like to see more diversity than 4 tech companies owning absolutely everything.
robinhood 6y ago
10 billion dollars for a software that have no clear competitive advantages other than having a community is simply obscene to me. The older I get (I'm 39), the less I understand this tech world. Huge valuations thrown out of thin air, indecent crazy ass salaries in the valley, sales of companies in the range of ten of billions. I don't see why I should read tech news anymore, apart from actual tech and not business related news. I'll go back in my small OSS world where I feel "normal".
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Dang. Good for the stock options holders, bad news for the rest of us.
DreamScatter 6y ago
in that case, i will ditch discord for zulip chat instead microsoft buying Github is fine, since everything i do on github is open source, but chat applications are more private, and I would consider ditching discord if a company like microsoft buys discord, just like i ditched tumblr when yahoo bought it

410 points by meibo 6y ago

chovybizzass 6y ago

back to irc. its not for sale.

m-p-3 6y ago
Or Matrix.
superdisk 6y ago
Spin up your own XMPP server with Prosody. I did a week or two ago, and it works pretty well aside from on iOS where the clients really need work.
- MattJ100 6y ago
  Glad you're liking Prosody! There is a lot of work underway to improve the iOS experience, particularly in the Monal and Siskin projects. Some of the work on Siskin is being sponsored by our other project, Snikket. For all these projects one of the best things you can do right now is simply try them and give feedback, reporting any issues you encounter.
NDizzle 6y ago
My exact thoughts.
jniedrauer 6y ago
I never left. Freenode is an amazing resource.
- mattowen_uk 6y ago
  I find existing IRC communities/channels almost impossible to penetrate. The people have known each other for so long, that they are effectively a closed group. And I'm saying this as a person who was a daily IRC user 20 years ago.

oltdaniel 6y ago

The stuff I worry about is, that Discord currently runs in the Google Cloud and that they will require an Microsoft Account in order to Login and Linux Support will be even worse in the future (yes it works great, but Screen sharing overloads everything for X Minutes). I hope Discord will stay Discord, owned by Discord.

ent101 6y ago

I hope it won't suffer the same fate as Skype.

Loranubi 6y ago
Or more recently Mixer.
- meibo 6y ago
  I really don't think this will happen - Discord has hit a sort of "critical mass" that you don't just kill like it happened with Mixer. If anything, I hope they will treat it like GitHub and let them act mostly on their own, while actually improving the service. Recent feature additions point to an Enterprise service they are setting up, so this may be a part of their new strategy while keeping the service accessible to free users despite their crazy operating costs.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Microsoft's strategy with GitHub is very likely to replace their old Azure DevOps (Server) offerings within the next 2-3 years. Then they can cash in on the Windows and mac/Linux crowd at the same time with a single product. The same will probably happen with Discord inside the Xbox ecosystem where they want to rival Steam with their Xbox game pass. Discord is the perfect community to do it with.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  It won't. When Google acquired YouTube, there were similar concerns that the platform would be "corporatized" to death and be replaced. Corporatized, it has been, but its dominance in its marketplace is stronger than ever. Twitch has emerged as a serious competitor for games, but YT remains just as big if not bigger than Twitch in this corner. GitHub and LinkedIn are similarly thriving under Microsoft's wing, without a Twitch-like competitor in sight. Instagram is more popular than ever since it was acquired by Facebook. Discord will be fine. Microsoft has a lot of experience in the gaming space thanks to the Xbox ecosystem of services, and in the online chat room space, thanks to Teams.

jimbob45 6y ago

To be honest, my friends and I just want the P2P reliability of Skype back. MS just ruined the UI and experience so badly that Discord, despite being slower, was preferable. For example, I got hacked on Skype. Already I’m upset because it wasn’t my fault. However, I couldn’t delete the malicious link it messaged to all of my friends because reasons. Instead, I had to contact each individually to tell them not to click the link. It’s a lot of stuff like that where Skype actively worked against its user base on each new release.

deleted 6y ago
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BoysenberryPi 6y ago

Please don't do this. Microsoft chat services are the absolute worst. I've had to use Skype for years after Microsoft purchased it and it was bad. I have to use Teams for work and it's just abysmal. I don't know why but everything Microsoft touches in this space turns to absolute trash.

jbm 6y ago
I have had to move from Slack to Teams. Despite what everyone says about Slack, Teams is much, much worse because of the complex and incomprehensible integrations with Active Directory. I have had invitations to meetings that I can click on and that don't trigger the Teams app. The "Join meeting" button doesn't show up in Firefox, and even in Chrome, I get sucked into a redirect hell. I even have meetings created without the meeting invitation link - despite the meeting having been created within Teams itself. I have resorted to inviting people to Google meets just to get stuff clarified. But it's still better than Azure DevOps.
- easton 6y ago
  The other thing that sucks about Azure AD and Teams is that if you invite someone from outside your tenant into a meeting and their IT admin has disabled guest login into other tenants (not uncommon in places like banks where they don’t want people leaving credentials everywhere, even if heavily scoped), they will get a cryptic error message and you will never know that they got an error unless they call you out of band and tell you, and by that point you’re probably 15 minutes into the meeting. This was the reason the last place I worked switched to Zoom, since if you invited someone outside the org it just popped up a box asking them for a name.
HenryKissinger 6y ago
I too use Teams at work and I think it's fine. What do you dislike about it more specifically?
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  It just doesn't work? I've tried multiple times on various projects, but "using" Teams on Linux or Mac is a sure way to loose contact with your team. Skype works much better (or at all I guess for me).

kivlad 6y ago

Surprisingly enough this gives it more credibility in my book. I refused to use it for a while until a revenue stream was introduced (Nitro) and still gave me an unsettling feeling with all the data harvesting - I still won't download the desktop app simply because of the information it collects about the games you have installed, without the user's consent. It also feels like there's much less of an inclination of it failing like Skype has, with a high likelihood of joining the Xbox division while keeping the brand.

ffpip 6y ago

Introducing Microsoft Teams for Gamers, a new platform that empowers gamers to get the best out of their gaming sessions. Game, meet, chat, call, and collaborate in just one place. Discord Meet Now is now available in Windows 10 taskbar so you can meet with a simple click. No sign ups. No downloads required. Would you like to try Discord in the new Microsoft Edge, "the browser recommended by Microsoft"?

HenryKissinger 6y ago
Microsoft may try its hand at integrating Discord within the Xbox ecosystem.
- leetrout 6y ago
  Needs to happen whether they buy them or not.
- agilob 6y ago
  oh no
shermozle 6y ago
Note that Microsoft Teams for Gamers doesn't work with Microsoft Teams for Enterprise (Linc) or Microsoft Teams for Home (Skype). Microsoft branding is such a clusterfuck.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  What about Skype for Business?
- Traster 6y ago
  Microsoft software is a clusterfuck. The branding is very clean. It's not the marketing guys' fault that MS bought 3 different solutions to the same problem.
  - TomJansen 6y ago

sheikheddy 6y ago

Microsoft Teams for work/school, Discord for gaming/life (Xbox tie in?), Skype for... what?

nikolay 6y ago
Skype and Discord are quite different. My mother uses Skype, she won't use Discord.
bitreality 6y ago
Skype for business school case studies on how to destroy a massive lead in video chat and messaging.
- nikolay 6y ago
  In Eastern Europe, Viber is pretty popular. Also, many telecoms in Bulgaria, for example, don't account Viber data usage towards your quota, so, even people on the lowest tiers get unlimited free video and audio calls. But some offer this for WhatsApp traffic and many mix and match it with Facebook. So, Microsoft really doesn't pay much attention to Skype - it was the most popular service in Bulgaria, but now almost nobody uses it due to these promos.
  - bitreality 6y ago
    I assume those data waivers are set up through deals between the telcos and the companies behind those applications. Microsoft certainly has the resources to arrange similar deals, but they seem to have given up on Skype years ago. Absolutely baffling, especially with the recent valuation of Zoom.
    - nikolay 6y ago
      Yeah, it's all a matter of focus and when their focus is on Teams.
1023bytes 6y ago
Skype has a huge brand awareness, a lot of older people use it.

dyeje 6y ago

Imagine if Twitch had went all in on becoming a Twitch / Patreon platform instead of the failed game store. One stop shop for monetizing and interacting with your communities.

Shadonototro 6y ago

time to find an alternative.. why do they want to buy everything that works? they love destroying things?

astrange 6y ago
The MS gaming division is pretty good. GamePass and Minecraft certainly aren't destroyed.

Shadonototro 6y ago

Maybe an opportunity for TeamSpeak to do a big comeback? https://new.teamspeak.com/ https://new.teamspeak.com/

testcase_delta 6y ago
I'm a ventrilo man myself
- tester34 6y ago
  2.1.4?
f1refly 6y ago
While I use teamspeak myself and will probably use the new one when it comes out (provided I can still host the server), I don't think they have much of a place in the future because they failed to innovate in time. As the top comment for this article is arguing, Microsoft isn't buying discords shitty js based software or their company for the great culture they might have, they're buying the mainstream teenage communication market. That market isn't interested to switch to a copy of discord where the only perceivable difference is a total lack of users. The only thing teamspeak will achieve with this update is further alienate it's current userbase that stuck with them for various reasons, may that be the familiarity, the native client, the ability to selfhost or the availiable plugins for games like arma. There's no solution to this, they're in a position where the only possible move is to lose.

techdragon 6y ago

While I'm sure this is just their way of validating their current market value after their last cash raise. Assuming its real this might actually be a good thing, at least on the technical front. For all the talent at Discord and their impressive efforts as far as core product... their basically non-existent privacy between users is a disturbing joke, and while I want to be polite, i'm just going to quote myself from a comment on the github issue here. https://github.com/discord/discord-api-docs/issues/1393 https://github.com/discord/discord-api-docs/issues/1393 > I’ll be brutally honest, I am quite disappointed to discover that a service so popular that goes out of its encourage developers to integrate, embed, and build on top of their api, lacks any machine readable API specification for developers. Really, really disappointed > Edit: This shouldn't be funny. How is the discord public api developers lack of respect for the developers who use their api funny? Standards based api specifications makes it easier for everyone to work with their API. Their API documentation isn’t translated, they have no machine readable API specification to make up for the lack of translated documentation for people who speak languages other than English. > I am disappointed because this is at odds with their professed goals of being for everyone. Apparently they are only for everyone if you’re a user/customer. Developers better read English and have enough spare time to implement their api from scratch... And before someone mentions their community libraries, I’d argue that being required to use those to get anything practical done, because the official API isn’t specified well enough to just use directly with standard tools, is just a further disappointment.

ve55 6y ago

What's interesting about acquisitions like this is that the actual value that is being transacted is the userbase and their data, along with the inability for either of those to easily move elsewhere. No one wants to buy the actual chat application itself, because they could build equivalent technology on their own. But users are locked into platforms so heavily and for such long time periods that they themselves give the platform almost the entirety of its value (not to single out Discord, since we all know this is how a lot of acquisitions work in practice). [As an additional caveat, I will add that Discord has definitely built something that its users love, and I don't want to undermine the absurd amount of UI, feature refinement, and scaling work they've done successfully. It isn't negligible, but it is also not >$10B of software engineering.] I've read many discussions where someone says something of the form "I wish I didn't have to use X, but my friends and family all use it, so I'm forced to", and I think upon consideration of this statement that there is something deeply wrong with the way network effects and protocols function on our Internet such that this can even be a common scenario. We really do have quite a crisis of non-interoperability that generalizes towards a complete lack of user control, be it software, hardware, data, or anything in between. With that said, if Microsoft does purchase Discord, it might not be as bad as some foretell. While we can point to something like Skype as a failure, we can also point to something like Github, which has been doing very well post-acquisition, and in my opinion hasn't gotten worse at all. It's quite possible they wouldn't want to profit off of Discord individually, but rather use it as another tool to expand their general ecosystem horizontally. On the other hand, they could also do the exact opposite and start harvesting data and maximizing advertisements en masse, lest my post become too optimistic in tone, since this is still HN. Lastly, remember that this is still just a rumor that various news outlets have picked up on and is nowhere near guaranteed. For those looking for alternatives due to this, or just because they'd like to own their own data for once, I think Matrix is likely to be the best general solution in this product space, both with respect to similar app functionality as well as quality constraints (real encryption, decentralization, FOSS, etc).

deleted 6y ago
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A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

leemcd56 6y ago

I don’t know how I feel about this. Personally, I would rather Discord to stay independent… but it is hard to pass up that kind of money.

leetrout 6y ago

Reminder: Mumble is fantastic and free. https://www.mumble.info/ https://www.mumble.info/

HideousKojima 6y ago
Free as in freedom, even
NDizzle 6y ago
Most people I know use Discord like IRC during the day. Voice chat if and when they play games. Or big events, like election night or big sporting events. It's not all voice chat all the time.
SilverRed 6y ago
No mobile client which makes it pretty useless for a lot of people. I probably use discord on ios more than on pc.
- stryan 6y ago
  There are multiple Android clients. I think in the past there was an iOS client, not sure what the current status is.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    The iOS client is still in the app store. Not sure whether it works though as the last update is 3 years ago.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
It also has incredibly low latency, which I've found makes a huge difference to conversation quality.
- IshKebab 6y ago
  So does Discord. Discord is clearly much better than Mumble.

etempleton 6y ago

Discord would be crazy to not take this deal. They could go public, but they have no clear monetization path to ever reach that valuation. For Microsoft, however, it holds incredible strategic importance to their Xbox division. If suddenly the #1 gaming voice and text chat on PC is fully cross-compatible with Xbox and Xbox services it puts Sony at a huge ecosystem disadvantage. When added to the context of Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda and their shift in strategy to Xbox as a service it makes perfect sense.

wayneftw 6y ago
If they start requiring a Microsoft account to sign in like they did with Mixer then I know a bunch of people will be out, including me. If they treat it like GitHub and let it be it's own thing then maybe I'll stick around. I doubt they're going to treat it like that though because they don't treat gamers like they do devs. Maybe now's a good time for somebody to start building an alternative.
- etempleton 6y ago
  I wonder. You are right, they would probably force accounts become Microsoft accounts at some point. I think there is also going to be higher public expectations of moderating and monitoring of what is discussed on Discord if Microsoft owns them. That may not be a headache that Microsoft even wants to deal with.
- shermablanca 6y ago
  There is an alternative, and it's quite good. https://www.guilded.gg/ https://www.guilded.gg/
  - techdragon 6y ago
    The issue is that we are entering a phase where secondary services are adding value on top of discord. Things like Patreon integration for content creators, numerous service specific bots and a growing number of VOIP related integrations (for example https://craig.chat/home/ https://craig.chat/home/) make it harder to consider alternatives as replacements.

rrdharan 6y ago

Kind of interesting given that they passed on Slack for $8B not too long ago... https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an-8-billion-bid-for-slack-will-focus-on-skype-instead/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/04/source-microsoft-mulled-an...

meddlepal 6y ago
Slack is not strategically interesting. They are already eating the enterprise communication market with Teams. Acquiring Slack would basically be a talent and tech hire nothing more... not worth $8B. Discord gives them something gamers know and love and could be paired with Xbox. Gives them a huge competitive edge against Sony, especially if they intend to build a cross-play centric platform between Windows and Xbox.
ipsum2 6y ago
Probably passed on Slack due to anti-trust, since Teams + Slack would be owning a large majority share of group chat.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Where's the anti-trust? Imagine if they owned minecraft, tik tok, and discord as planned. Trying to buy off all the teens?

quantified 6y ago
What is this “anti-trust” of which you speak? i’ve heard a rumor it was a thing long ago...
Lammy 6y ago
> Where's the anti-trust? Consider one of my favorite "stories in two headlines", and extrapolate :) - NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution (2009) https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f... - Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Why, Exactly? (2011) https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/ https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/

guptaneil 6y ago

This is surprising given Discord had 2 fundraising rounds in 2020 alone. If that wasn't to gain momentum for an IPO, then they must just be losing cash very quickly. For MS, the obvious integration point is Xbox Game Pass, but Discord has been busy pushing gamers off their platform for the past year in favor of broader communities. It'll be interesting to see if they reverse course here, or if MS will position Discord as a free community version of Teams. If you're looking for a better alternative, check out Guilded (YCS17) - https://www.guilded.gg https://www.guilded.gg I've heard users say Guilded makes Discord look like Skype, but didn't realize how accurate that would become. Disclaimer: I work at Guilded, but views are my own, etc

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
roselan 6y ago
I went to the website and my first reaction was literally "wtf is that shit?" Why should I drop discord? Why should I create an account? Why should I download the app and not test in browser? Even at the bottom: > Ready to try Guilded? > It's easy and free. If there is a try, there is a catch. (maybe not but on the web it's implied nowadays) This is not appealing at all. I'm pretty sure the product is good but your "marketing" sounds completely off to me.
Dracophoenix 6y ago
Does Guilded allow self-hosted servers and E2EE like Mumble and Teamspeak?

jeswin 6y ago

One thing that Microsoft always messes up (especially with its acquisitions) is the Login. Microsoft apps have the worst login flows I've seen - not only is it inconsistent across sites, it is also slow often requiring many redirects. It may be just me, but the Login experience is an essential one for me.

chillfox 6y ago
Yep, Microsoft login experience has been getting worse over the years. The current one I go through for Office 365 is like this: - type in email, click "next" - wait for next page to load - type in password, click "next" - wait for next page to load - 2FA, click "next" - wait for next page to load - click "next"
- mattmanser 6y ago
  You forgot the subsequent: - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen - redirect, blank screen
  - zo1 6y ago
    Well we all wanted "OAuth", "OIDC" and other related stuff...for privacy! Now we wonder why chat apps can't interoperate, we have walled gardens, Google's killing the open web, and numerous other dysfunctional things going on on the internet that I can't enumerate fully without making it all sound like baseless rambling.
- rochak 6y ago
  Exactly. Whoever came up with that design couldn’t be more ignorant.
- kornesh 6y ago
  Reminds me of Elon's quote "product errors reflect organizational errors"
- LoathsLights 6y ago

ZeroCool2u 6y ago

Ugh, I hope not. If Discord goes the way if GitHub and is down every time Azure is down, it's going to be unusable.

imwillofficial 6y ago

Microsoft is making big moves in the industry, I've never been so stoked to watch them. reply

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

easton 6y ago

I suppose this means Discord for Enterprise is never happening, which stinks because it honestly is the most user friendly out of all of these chat applications with the team-> channel setup. Kind of reminiscent of Basecamp in the project management space, in that respect. Maybe they’ll take some performance and UX cues and add them to Teams (but I’m saying this about the people who decided to make a greenfield chat/collaboration tool and make the file storage backend SharePoint, so, I suppose I’ll just cry)

chillfox 6y ago
We used Discord at work for team chat for about a month before upper management found out and dictated that everyone use Teams because it's free as part of Office 365. Discord worked so well for everyone on different platforms and Teams has got so many problems.
- mojo982 6y ago
  Management never seems to understand anything besides direct dollars. How much time has it cost the company to switch to Teams? It's definitely not zero.
  - easton 6y ago
    Teams also has an SLA and built in policies for retention, search, and auditing, which Discord does not have because it's a free, consumer service. Which is why I desperately want them to make a enterprise version.
IshKebab 6y ago
I may be in the minority but Discord has a really confusing UI. It's so different to anything else and all the controls are just sort of thrown somewhere (e.g. user preferences). Slack is much much better in that regard (though not perfect).

idclip 6y ago

RIP Discord?

chillfox 6y ago

Well that would be sad. Discord is so much better than Teams. I hope they don't integrate it with the Microsoft stack.

villgax 6y ago

And do what with it? Shoddy PMs to add Skype/Teams integration or dump Teams all together?

reilly3000 6y ago

Microsoft buys communities. From the 20% Facebook investment to LinkedIn, GitHub, Minecraft, etc they are aggregating and integrating massive, generation defining audiences. Discord is most definitely that for gamers, pandemic teens, and frankly any SMB with foresight. It’s a fantastic platform. It has the same moderation issues that all online communities have, but it generally happens at a server level. It’s very much a fit for their portfolio, and it’s a great time to sell for them. Nitro can’t do that much in sales, but certainly Microsoft will find a way to make money with it.

musicale 6y ago

While on one hand I'm sort of OK to see Discord cash in, and Microsoft seems to have not destroyed github yet..... I really hope Discord won't just be sucked into Teams or turned into an Xbox thing. I also fear that MS Discord might destroy any remote chance of a Discord app on PS5 or Switch.

tehbeard 6y ago
> Microsoft seems to have not destroyed github yet While I'm hopeful that they turned a new leaf... I don't think they've held GH as long as they did Skype before they broke that..
- aerique 6y ago
  Exactly, MS hasn't even gotten started on GitHub yet.
mattowen_uk 6y ago
> ..or turned into an Xbox thing. That's exactly what they'll be doing. 'Xbox' is now MSs umbrella term for all their gaming stuff, regardless of platform.

tim44 6y ago

Democratic candidate etc Bloomberg is trying to buy more discord?

dustinmoris 6y ago

Microsoft hasn’t been able to develop a single successful product since Office. It doesn’t matter how many successful businesses Microsoft buys up, if they don’t also start buying talent then they will destroy this one as well.

ipsum2 6y ago
Azure seems to be doing well.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  If measured by the suicide rate of its users then yes.
SahAssar 6y ago
Office was released in 1990, are you saying that no MS products since 1990 have been successful?
sandos 6y ago
I have to say I quite like Teams, and everyone around seems to, too. Although we came from Skype so might not say much. Also I think Planner is nice! :)

IceWreck 6y ago

I'd like to shill on Matrix, (https://matrix.org https://matrix.org) which is essentially a federated and open source Discord like app. Also, kind of modern IRC.

bluecalm 6y ago

Some comparisons full of personal opinions: GitHub 7.5B. This one has terrible UI is 100x easier than Discord from UI and engineering point of view and will open for disruption from Discord like team in the future. It's very easy to imagine much better GitHub. With Discord you can think of many cool features to add but that's about it. It is a pleasure to use and has fantastic UI. Skype - 8.5B 10 years ago for a steaming pile of shit software. LinkedIn - 26b for trivial (in comparison to Discord) software full of dark patterns people don't really like to use. It might just be Microsoft best acquisition. Let's hope they leave the original team in charge and let them continue to work on it. Discord is exceptional but there are still many cool things that can be added to it.

jake_morrison 6y ago

Another success story for Elixir/Erlang. If you are building chat apps with anything else, you are doing it wrong. :-)

junon 6y ago
Uh. What? Discord's client is electron. Unless you're referring to their servers. In which case, nice bait.

ExcavateGrandMa 6y ago

lolz get sold :Ð

lprd 6y ago

I really hope in the future that a policy can be set in place that prevents these types of acquisitions (on this scale, specifically) from happening. A lot of my favorite products have been ruined by acquisitions like this, and its clear that Microsoft will follow suite considering their track record.

wideareanetwork 6y ago

Too cheap!

NicoJuicy 6y ago

Microsoft is also heavily using Discord. Eg. the community for c# and Dapper is on it.

nerdponx 6y ago

Ugh. There is no real Discord alternative. Matrix is comparatively lacking in features, tends to be somewhat slow, and is not a platform that any kid can sign up on for free and be chatting on any device within minutes. I hope things will improve with Matrix, but for now I also hope that MS doesn't totally fuck up Discord. Also slightly terrifying are the privacy implications. I never expected privacy with Discord, but now that MS is involved I expect that every interaction with the interface will be tracked, analyzed, and used to target ads at me. And is waiting to be exfiltrated in a data leak.

cblconfederate 6y ago
I would like to see an easy way to integrate Matrix to existing communities, and i think that is the niche they should be targetting, not standalone matrix servers that come and go. The federated login thing is really not something that web services should be doing, it should be provided by the browser or some public system. I currently use mattermost as discord backup/replacement
kuschku 6y ago
Matrix won't run forever (they're also burning through cash right now), and neither will Discord. All these platforms are only "better" than IRC because they're giving investor money away to kids. By the time the VC money is gone, we'll all be back on IRC. And all the effort spent on integrations with platforms that used predatory pricing to destroy competition, could instead have been spent on open protocols.
- nerdponx 6y ago
  Matrix is an open protocol. The problem with Matrix right now is that it's too difficult to self-host and Matrix-the-organization doesn't have the resources to offer seamless, Discord-like performance on their default/official instance.
- stryan 6y ago
  >Matrix won't run forever (they're also burning through cash right now) Matrix is an open protocol; it doesn't need a company behind it to continue existing, unlike Discord. If you mean Element (formerly New Vector), are they? I'd believe that they're not raking in the dough or anything, but they've gotten some good government contracts in the past few years so I'd assume they have some money.

sandos 6y ago

But... they have Teams. Why?

corobo 6y ago

Logging into Discord becomes a jump across 12 different domains and even then you're probably not in Discord yet. Also the account you use for Discord is now the same one as the one with all your Azure stuff on it. Yayy. Please Microsoft, ruin more social apps.

jimmySixDOF 6y ago
When MS bought Skype and finally merged the IDs with Hotmail and Windows, I was devestated. I had never once changed my password on Hotmail since probably 1996 and it was just a four letter word. So, one day, say 2014, I login to Skype after forever and reset the password but now it also resets the same Hotmail account I used for that Skype ID. I had that password for almost 20 years and bet it was uncrackable since they had stopped allowing less than 4+ digits ages ago. They even scrambled my hotmail's Outgoing user name in the process but whatever - it was just for spam accounts anyhow although I was hopping mad at the time.
- nightcracker 6y ago
  > I had that password for almost 20 years and bet it was uncrackable since they had stopped allowing less than 4+ digits ages ago. I'm sorry but this is the most absurd thing I've read in a while.
- corobo 6y ago
  I think we agree on the login-is-a-pain side of things but I strongly believe passwords should be disposable. If I even catch a hint of a password being leaked or insecure I cycle it. I'd hide a 20 year old password in shame haha, no matter how many characters it has
tonyaiken 6y ago
Didn’t happen for GitHub or LinkedIn

cblconfederate 6y ago

Is there information about the share of discords that are gaming and non-gaming related?

29athrowaway 6y ago

https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE https://youtu.be/H27rfr59RiE

matthewfelgate 6y ago

Noooooooooooo. Why must Microsoft buy everything.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

Does the concept of antitrust even exist anymore? Or is this our future: new startups grow for a decade than get absorbed by one of ten monster corporations.

sjg007 6y ago

I have a new Law. Every application expands until it incorporates instant messaging.

fakedang 6y ago

Why is everyone here comparing Discord to Slack or Zoom? Discord is purely a play for MS in its drive into gaming.

kwanbix 6y ago

Is crazy that Microsoft had an app chat for years (Messenger not exactly the same) that basically died and now they are buying another chat app for 10b! Not to forget what a mess they have done with Skype UX.

rswail 6y ago

No one has observed that the talks were between Discord and the head of the Microsoft Xbox division. Xbox can see the direct relevance of the Discord users to its own. Integrating Discord into its ecosystem allows for synergies directly. This is not a Teams/Skype/Lync replacement. The underlying technology might get used eventually, but that would be invisible to the userbases.

varispeed 6y ago

This is the problem with capitalism - company is starting to be getting too big to fail and the rich are looking to exploit it as a storage of wealth and influence. It has no longer a mission to provide value for customers, but to provide value to shareholders while doing everything in its power to keep or increase the value and stifle the competition, so that customers who no longer like the product had nowhere to go. When a company reaches that point it should be ordered to split by law or it should not be allowed to be sold to other company. Another thing that needs fixing is corporate ownership - it should only be possible for individuals to hold shares - as individual will unlikely to have a negative influence as corporate shareholders do.

Apaec 6y ago

How much money does MS have? Can they just buy any innovation they want?

chet-uk 6y ago
$14bn on hand per their last earnings report, but any deal like this would be paid for using a mix of MSFT stock plus cash. And yes, at the scale of company we're talking with Microsoft, they can afford any innovation stage company they want.

rdtwo 6y ago

Discord is pretty powerful. It needs a security layer and it can be deployed on a corporate network. It’s much better than Cisco teams or Mattermost. Lots of discord groups that are as organized as company serving 1-2k members

Jan454 6y ago

and there goes another great service and vanishes within a few month from beeing great to unsupported to lost entirely ..

birdyrooster 6y ago

Bombing the Discord interview to be one of the first hires hurt. It was the first time I interviewed for a company that fit my personal interests to a tee but I couldn’t write a web front end from scratch that could do a progressive loading bar before the end of the second interview session. It was embarrassing to be so dependent on my Google tooling that I couldn’t cut it when I was untethered from my work laptop.

DreamScatter 6y ago
i guess your comment shows that people who work at google live in a bubble

mmmBacon 6y ago

We have enough consolidation. I’d like to see more diversity than 4 tech companies owning absolutely everything.

robinhood 6y ago

10 billion dollars for a software that have no clear competitive advantages other than having a community is simply obscene to me. The older I get (I'm 39), the less I understand this tech world. Huge valuations thrown out of thin air, indecent crazy ass salaries in the valley, sales of companies in the range of ten of billions. I don't see why I should read tech news anymore, apart from actual tech and not business related news. I'll go back in my small OSS world where I feel "normal".

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Dang. Good for the stock options holders, bad news for the rest of us.

DreamScatter 6y ago

in that case, i will ditch discord for zulip chat instead microsoft buying Github is fine, since everything i do on github is open source, but chat applications are more private, and I would consider ditching discord if a company like microsoft buys discord, just like i ditched tumblr when yahoo bought it