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> People choose platforms because of their functionality I think most people choose platforms because of their popularity. Everyone uses foo, let's just use f

> People choose platforms because of their functionality I think most people choose platforms because of their popularity. Everyone uses foo, let's just use foo.

pleeb 5y ago
This is why my community moved over to Discord; our IRC channels were dead, even the forums are slow. When switching over to Discord, we had a great deal of new users and a lot of older users who have since switched to Discord jumped back on.
jasode 5y ago
>I think most people choose platforms because of their popularity. Everyone uses foo, let's just use foo. The "popularity" reason does not explain the cause & effect timeline. Discord was started 2015. But Matrix, XMPP/Jabber, IRC were older than that and thus by definition back in 2015, they were already more popular and well known. Thus, the original first reason can't be popularity -- because there was a point when Discord was not popular and it was still chosen over Matrix & IRC. The reason is that it's easier for project maintainers to create new Discord servers + channels. E.g. : https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-do-I-create-a-server- https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-... Put a different way... What caused Discord to become more popular than Matrix? The obvious answer is that a few clicks on a web page is easier than installing and configuring a Matrix server. Is there really a better explanation than "ease of use"? EDIT reply to: >Discord was first popular with gamers because it offered _good voice chat_; and this popularity drew in other communities. I emphasized "good voice chat" because in that sentence, it's the more explanatory reason than just "popular". So the other and older alternatives like IRC did not have good voice chat. And this drives decisions of gamers that prioritize a desirable feature such as seamless VoIP over the need to use an open protocol (IRC) that's not owned by a corporation. In other words, whenever the proposed reason for product dominance is "popularity" or "network effects", we always want to dissect that further and look for the reason that caused the rising popularity. If we don't, we just end up with infinite recursive reasoning such as "it's popular because of its popularity" -- which is not a satisfactory nor helpful analysis.
- progval 5y ago
  Discord was first popular with gamers because it offered good voice chat; and this popularity drew in other communities.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    Exactly. I moved to Discord for VoIP gaming from Ventrilo which was proprietary, centralized, and subscription-based. It also had terrible latency. I moved our entire gaming team of 30 people to it. Mumble already existed, but it lacked a few pros Ventrilo did not have. Discord had so many pros that it outweight the cons, and on top of that: the main con (our privacy / data gathering) is practically invisible.
- rovr138 5y ago
  You’re assuming the platform chosen can’t be changed.
- feanaro 5y ago
  > Thus, the original first reason can't be popularity -- because there was a point when Discord was not popular and it was still chosen over Matrix & IRC. The reason is that it's easier for project maintainers to create new Discord servers + channels. Matrix did not have "servers" (in the Discord sense) until very recently. It's also much harder to produce an open, federated protocol than a proprietary one so Matrix has been less featureful than Discord for a long time, but the gap is closing quickly. There's also the matter of marketing: Discord is a product, Matrix is not, thus it's harder to market. Yes, now there's Element, which is a product, but given above, Discord has had an effective head start of several years. Give it a bit more time.
  - ptman 5y ago
    Please, even discord internally calls them guilds. Don't call them servers, call them guilds or teams or spaces or something descriptive.
    - 5y ago
scrapcode 5y ago
I think it is pretty simple really. If your goal is reaching the largest number of people through communication, you kind of have to adopt whatever is "meta."
Fnoord 5y ago
Aka the network effect.

> People choose platforms because of their functionality I think most people choose platforms because of their popularity. Everyone uses foo, let's just use foo.

pleeb 5y ago

This is why my community moved over to Discord; our IRC channels were dead, even the forums are slow. When switching over to Discord, we had a great deal of new users and a lot of older users who have since switched to Discord jumped back on.

jasode 5y ago

>I think most people choose platforms because of their popularity. Everyone uses foo, let's just use foo. The "popularity" reason does not explain the cause & effect timeline. Discord was started 2015. But Matrix, XMPP/Jabber, IRC were older than that and thus by definition back in 2015, they were already more popular and well known. Thus, the original first reason can't be popularity -- because there was a point when Discord was not popular and it was still chosen over Matrix & IRC. The reason is that it's easier for project maintainers to create new Discord servers + channels. E.g. : https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-do-I-create-a-server- https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/204849977-How-... Put a different way... What caused Discord to become more popular than Matrix? The obvious answer is that a few clicks on a web page is easier than installing and configuring a Matrix server. Is there really a better explanation than "ease of use"? EDIT reply to: >Discord was first popular with gamers because it offered _good voice chat_; and this popularity drew in other communities. I emphasized "good voice chat" because in that sentence, it's the more explanatory reason than just "popular". So the other and older alternatives like IRC did not have good voice chat. And this drives decisions of gamers that prioritize a desirable feature such as seamless VoIP over the need to use an open protocol (IRC) that's not owned by a corporation. In other words, whenever the proposed reason for product dominance is "popularity" or "network effects", we always want to dissect that further and look for the reason that caused the rising popularity. If we don't, we just end up with infinite recursive reasoning such as "it's popular because of its popularity" -- which is not a satisfactory nor helpful analysis.

progval 5y ago
Discord was first popular with gamers because it offered good voice chat; and this popularity drew in other communities.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Exactly. I moved to Discord for VoIP gaming from Ventrilo which was proprietary, centralized, and subscription-based. It also had terrible latency. I moved our entire gaming team of 30 people to it. Mumble already existed, but it lacked a few pros Ventrilo did not have. Discord had so many pros that it outweight the cons, and on top of that: the main con (our privacy / data gathering) is practically invisible.
rovr138 5y ago
You’re assuming the platform chosen can’t be changed.
feanaro 5y ago
> Thus, the original first reason can't be popularity -- because there was a point when Discord was not popular and it was still chosen over Matrix & IRC. The reason is that it's easier for project maintainers to create new Discord servers + channels. Matrix did not have "servers" (in the Discord sense) until very recently. It's also much harder to produce an open, federated protocol than a proprietary one so Matrix has been less featureful than Discord for a long time, but the gap is closing quickly. There's also the matter of marketing: Discord is a product, Matrix is not, thus it's harder to market. Yes, now there's Element, which is a product, but given above, Discord has had an effective head start of several years. Give it a bit more time.
- ptman 5y ago
  Please, even discord internally calls them guilds. Don't call them servers, call them guilds or teams or spaces or something descriptive.
  - 5y ago

scrapcode 5y ago

I think it is pretty simple really. If your goal is reaching the largest number of people through communication, you kind of have to adopt whatever is "meta."

Fnoord 5y ago

Aka the network effect.