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Note: Discord has 14x more active users than Slack. Discord has a technology and feature superset over Slack. The Discord audience is becoming the profession

Note: Discord has 14x more active users than Slack. Discord has a technology and feature superset over Slack. The Discord audience is becoming the professional audience just about right now.

samstave 5y ago
Precisely. If they can parley this into solid trust over the coming mid-term, without any major security breaches, then they are set. (plus the other feature options that were mentioned E2E, stickers etc... they have room to grow. There is already some payment duct-tape setup. I am sure that, barring a complete fuckup, discord is going to do very well.)
__turbobrew__ 5y ago
Discord needs threads before I would even consider using it as a slack replacement.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Threads and the also send to channel are such a hack. It's much better to let conversations flow naturally.
  - Mehdi2277 5y ago
    There are many work conversations I have that rely heavily on threads and make the channel useless to scroll if sent directly. I think most of the discussions I read are in threads as often one engineer will encounter a bug, ask for help, and then there will be a back and forth discussion over a thread figuring the issue out. Keeping that in the channel makes reading the channel later fairly useless as most of that detailed discussion is too specific to care about. But being able to skim the main messages and see if anyone had similar issues and then enter that thread is great. On call alerts have a channel and then resolving the alert is often a thread discussion.
  - lanstin 5y ago
    It makes a hard ceiling as to how much volume one channel can tolerate. It also forces the conversations to be more sync instead of async, which has a high cost in terms of being able to ignore it for a while.
  - hyperbovine 5y ago
    I’m absolutely loving that this comment is three threads deep.
cdelsolar 5y ago
yeah I honestly like Discord way more than Slack.
pell 5y ago
> Discord has 14x more active users than Slack. From what I understand Slack's model is based on selling plans to teams and companies. Within that framework users are actually representing a real monthly recurring dollar value. I don't think Discord is anywhere close to this.
- poyu 5y ago
  On top of that, they have things that are considered "Enterprise Ready" https://slack.com/enterprise https://slack.com/enterprise
- herbst 5y ago
  Slack is also thin, supports third party clients and is super easy to code for (Discord is too, but more hoops). And provides actual enterprise worthy support. From a professional POV deciding between both is a no brainer IMO
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  I'd be curious to hear some numbers on the percentage of active users with Nitro subscriptions. Slack's business model makes it easier for them to make monthly revenue off passive users (by encouraging teams/companies to over-provision and also double-dipping in the user overlaps between teams/companies), so in some respects it incentivizes them to optimize for passive users. The Nitro/Server Boost business model is likely to have fewer passive users paying the subscription costs recurring monthly and doesn't as easily double/triple dip users (unless they intentionally and optionally overpay for server boosts), but it incentivizes the company to keep active users happy.
cblconfederate 5y ago
i bet facebook has more users than linkedin but doubt anyone would pay a subscription for it
- RobLach 5y ago
  What's the argument? There are plenty of monetization approaches beyond subscriptions. FB rev/yr $90b LinkedIn rev/yr $9b
savanaly 5y ago
When I joined the Elm community I thought it was weird they use a Slack for real time discussion and not a Discord. When I asked why I found out that Discord's features are most certainly not a superset of Slack's. * Slack threads are an amazing feature and frequently used on the Elm slack. One discussion or one person's question can become a thread and then the channel won't be continuously pinged by the ongoing discussion, plus multiple discussions can happen in tandem. I remember when Slack added this feature lots of people including me were a bit disdainful. It feels like an awfully hard new UI pattern to get used to after so many years of single-threaded conversation on e.g. IRC. But now I would strongly oppose moving to Discord only because of this issue. * Slack also has a different model for channels on a server. There are probably caveats to these statements, but roughly speaking the default assumption on Slack is you don't belong to any channels in a server but can join what you want or what is configured for you, and on Discord the assumption is that you belong to everything and sometimes a Discord server will configure it so certain things are hidden. For a big organization like a programming language or a company the Slack model is preferable.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  Funny enough, I hate Slack threads. Discord has added a reply feature already that better captures the IRC feeling, and rumor is real threads are coming, we'll see :) (If you like threads, be sure to check out Zulip.)
  - TheFlyingFish 5y ago
    Threading in group IM's seems to be one of the more polarizing UX discussions that I've come across. A while back I was reading some of the discussions the Matrix people were having about implementing a threading model, where it became clear that there were three very distinct ideas of "good threading" floating around: 1. Infinitely-nestable threading, a la Reddit and HN (and probably other sites first, but those are the ones I've used it the most) 2. Single-level nested threading, a la Slack (and maybe Facebook? I forget how much nesting they allow) 3. Discord/IRC-style replies (like you mentioned) where the responding message just quotes the original, possibly with a slight UI indication to make it easier to parse. I guess you could argue that Zulip-style threading is a fourth option, but IMO that's closer to a bulletin board than a group IM, because you can't have a message that isn't in a thread, so almost no discussion happens at the top level of a given channel. What's interesting to me is that the split between who prefers which style of threading is pretty close to even. I suspect, although I'm not sure, that it comes down to two things: the size of the groups in which you normally participate, and how closely-knit they are. A small, closely-knit group would likely prefer Discord/IRC-style threading, because sub-discussions are more likely to be of interest to those not participating, and the added noise isn't too big of a deal if the group is small. A larger, but still closely-knit group would probably prefer Slack-style threading, because even though sub-discussions might still be interesting to more than the immediate participants, but a single message space starts to become unusable with more than a couple of sub-discussions going on. A large and loosely-knit group is is likely to prefer Reddit/HN style discussions (and in fact those are two examples of large and loosely-knit communities) because a sub-discussion is less likely to be of interest to a significant portion of the main discussion's participants. Maybe, at least. It would be interesting to do a poll and see how those factors correlate.
hu3 5y ago
Can confirm. A client of mine just moved ~50 devs from Slack to Discord. I'm in the process of helping them move/port their infrastructure slack bots to discord and it has been super smooth. > The Discord audience is becoming the professional audience just about right now.
unethical_ban 5y ago
The feature set of Slack and Discord are overlapping, but neither is a superset of the other.

Note: Discord has 14x more active users than Slack. Discord has a technology and feature superset over Slack. The Discord audience is becoming the professional audience just about right now.

samstave 5y ago

Precisely. If they can parley this into solid trust over the coming mid-term, without any major security breaches, then they are set. (plus the other feature options that were mentioned E2E, stickers etc... they have room to grow. There is already some payment duct-tape setup. I am sure that, barring a complete fuckup, discord is going to do very well.)

__turbobrew__ 5y ago

Discord needs threads before I would even consider using it as a slack replacement.

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
Threads and the also send to channel are such a hack. It's much better to let conversations flow naturally.
- Mehdi2277 5y ago
  There are many work conversations I have that rely heavily on threads and make the channel useless to scroll if sent directly. I think most of the discussions I read are in threads as often one engineer will encounter a bug, ask for help, and then there will be a back and forth discussion over a thread figuring the issue out. Keeping that in the channel makes reading the channel later fairly useless as most of that detailed discussion is too specific to care about. But being able to skim the main messages and see if anyone had similar issues and then enter that thread is great. On call alerts have a channel and then resolving the alert is often a thread discussion.
- lanstin 5y ago
  It makes a hard ceiling as to how much volume one channel can tolerate. It also forces the conversations to be more sync instead of async, which has a high cost in terms of being able to ignore it for a while.
- hyperbovine 5y ago
  I’m absolutely loving that this comment is three threads deep.

cdelsolar 5y ago

yeah I honestly like Discord way more than Slack.

pell 5y ago

> Discord has 14x more active users than Slack. From what I understand Slack's model is based on selling plans to teams and companies. Within that framework users are actually representing a real monthly recurring dollar value. I don't think Discord is anywhere close to this.

poyu 5y ago
On top of that, they have things that are considered "Enterprise Ready" https://slack.com/enterprise https://slack.com/enterprise
herbst 5y ago
Slack is also thin, supports third party clients and is super easy to code for (Discord is too, but more hoops). And provides actual enterprise worthy support. From a professional POV deciding between both is a no brainer IMO
WorldMaker 5y ago
I'd be curious to hear some numbers on the percentage of active users with Nitro subscriptions. Slack's business model makes it easier for them to make monthly revenue off passive users (by encouraging teams/companies to over-provision and also double-dipping in the user overlaps between teams/companies), so in some respects it incentivizes them to optimize for passive users. The Nitro/Server Boost business model is likely to have fewer passive users paying the subscription costs recurring monthly and doesn't as easily double/triple dip users (unless they intentionally and optionally overpay for server boosts), but it incentivizes the company to keep active users happy.

cblconfederate 5y ago

i bet facebook has more users than linkedin but doubt anyone would pay a subscription for it

RobLach 5y ago
What's the argument? There are plenty of monetization approaches beyond subscriptions. FB rev/yr $90b LinkedIn rev/yr $9b

savanaly 5y ago

When I joined the Elm community I thought it was weird they use a Slack for real time discussion and not a Discord. When I asked why I found out that Discord's features are most certainly not a superset of Slack's. * Slack threads are an amazing feature and frequently used on the Elm slack. One discussion or one person's question can become a thread and then the channel won't be continuously pinged by the ongoing discussion, plus multiple discussions can happen in tandem. I remember when Slack added this feature lots of people including me were a bit disdainful. It feels like an awfully hard new UI pattern to get used to after so many years of single-threaded conversation on e.g. IRC. But now I would strongly oppose moving to Discord only because of this issue. * Slack also has a different model for channels on a server. There are probably caveats to these statements, but roughly speaking the default assumption on Slack is you don't belong to any channels in a server but can join what you want or what is configured for you, and on Discord the assumption is that you belong to everything and sometimes a Discord server will configure it so certain things are hidden. For a big organization like a programming language or a company the Slack model is preferable.

steveklabnik 5y ago
Funny enough, I hate Slack threads. Discord has added a reply feature already that better captures the IRC feeling, and rumor is real threads are coming, we'll see :) (If you like threads, be sure to check out Zulip.)
- TheFlyingFish 5y ago
  Threading in group IM's seems to be one of the more polarizing UX discussions that I've come across. A while back I was reading some of the discussions the Matrix people were having about implementing a threading model, where it became clear that there were three very distinct ideas of "good threading" floating around: 1. Infinitely-nestable threading, a la Reddit and HN (and probably other sites first, but those are the ones I've used it the most) 2. Single-level nested threading, a la Slack (and maybe Facebook? I forget how much nesting they allow) 3. Discord/IRC-style replies (like you mentioned) where the responding message just quotes the original, possibly with a slight UI indication to make it easier to parse. I guess you could argue that Zulip-style threading is a fourth option, but IMO that's closer to a bulletin board than a group IM, because you can't have a message that isn't in a thread, so almost no discussion happens at the top level of a given channel. What's interesting to me is that the split between who prefers which style of threading is pretty close to even. I suspect, although I'm not sure, that it comes down to two things: the size of the groups in which you normally participate, and how closely-knit they are. A small, closely-knit group would likely prefer Discord/IRC-style threading, because sub-discussions are more likely to be of interest to those not participating, and the added noise isn't too big of a deal if the group is small. A larger, but still closely-knit group would probably prefer Slack-style threading, because even though sub-discussions might still be interesting to more than the immediate participants, but a single message space starts to become unusable with more than a couple of sub-discussions going on. A large and loosely-knit group is is likely to prefer Reddit/HN style discussions (and in fact those are two examples of large and loosely-knit communities) because a sub-discussion is less likely to be of interest to a significant portion of the main discussion's participants. Maybe, at least. It would be interesting to do a poll and see how those factors correlate.

hu3 5y ago

Can confirm. A client of mine just moved ~50 devs from Slack to Discord. I'm in the process of helping them move/port their infrastructure slack bots to discord and it has been super smooth. > The Discord audience is becoming the professional audience just about right now.

unethical_ban 5y ago

The feature set of Slack and Discord are overlapping, but neither is a superset of the other.