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Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Although you post still stands, I think you're very wrong in thinking about the reasoning wh

Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Although you post still stands, I think you're very wrong in thinking about the reasoning why people use one or another platform. Let's think about discord for a minute, why is everyone using it? And what are they using it for? I think the answers here are rather simple, people have a need for communication with peers; this communication usually takes many forms: text, voice, video, gifs, images. Discord is a platform that offers people a very simple and quick way of building communities capable of providing people will all of these forms of communication but really, now a days, every messenger application does the job. So the differentiating factor for discord is the ability to organise these communities better than any other platform (save for slack, which discord modelled itself after). Now, it's not perfect, it's impossible to build horizontal communities on discord but it does the job. So functionally, discord offers people seeking to build communities pretty much everything they could want. Now, it still has some problems: mainly that it's not very good for long-form or persistent messaging like a forum. And this is why you usually have discord communities with a reddit counterpart, a forum-like website and a real-time interaction community. This let discord built a very wide userbase, and once you have that then you really get to enjoy the magic sauce: network effects. To put it simply, people use discord because everyone else uses discord and everyone else uses discord because people use discord. As the internet grows it becomes increasingly difficult to break network effects even if you have an offering that's better. But even then, it's also extremely difficult to be novel given that these big companies can simply acquire you when they start seeing you as a threat (look at adobe buying figma). Companies are quicker than regulators at seeing potential market disruptions and threats, so in most cases they can stay ahead of the game. Imo, a lot of the failings of these companies come from underestimating the competition and then trying to play catch-up.

rvense 4y ago
> Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Technically, reddit and Discourse is more like forums, but a lot of things that would have been a forum 15 years ago are now Discord "servers".
- ajkjk 4y ago
  True, they were just Reddit or FB groups in the meantime.
  - stoobs 4y ago
    Yup, FB Groups was really the nail in the coffin for a lot of forums. Source - Me, ex large-ish forum admin. Reddit and Discord piled the dirt on top and added the headstone.
philippejara 4y ago
>Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. From my experience there's a split, more "generalist" forums did get "replaced" by reddit, by subs such as technology, games, news, etc. More "in-depth" forums where you expected to see the same guys working on something or having matches together etc I've seen being almost always replaced by discord:fighting games forums(even for games with good MM), dev/security/cracking forums, really anything that isn't "mass appeal".
lawgimenez 4y ago
Microsoft execs salivating at your comment. It won’t take long and Microsoft will buy Discord.
mildchalupa 4y ago
It's as though there is a life cycle of an applications development. Early the application is sleek, perhaps not feature rich however instead simple, concise. Either through scope creep, changed ownership or continuous addition of features the application becomes bloated. This could also be the stage of commercialization by way of adds. Finally the application dies as users move onward. This seems to be fairly common and it seems that as these applications and companies rise and fall that they each bring there own flavor to the mix. Google maps was concise in 2012, today the app requires a greater number of user inputs to enter a destination for example
- bee_rider 4y ago
  This is amplified for chat programs. They are not really all that technically interesting anymore. They are just "good" at first while they are trying to acquire new users, and providing services for free to so. Simple and light, because there's no need to add gimmicky features to attract new users -- Free is free, and anyway the competition has recently become awful and bloated in an attempt to figure out what the magic feature is that will justify their aggressive monetization scheme. Eventually good chat program runs out of runway, gets acquired (wow look at that userbase!) or needs to monetize on their own, and becomes the bad chat program. And the cycle continues.
Lazare 4y ago
> Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Although you post still stands, I think you're very wrong in thinking about the reasoning why people use one or another platform. There may be some contexts where that's true, but overwhelmingly I've seen Discord replacing forums, particularly for small, closed groups. Wheereas I've never so much as heard of any group adopting a private subreddit! But tons have ended up with a discord as their central social point (whether or not they need or use the voice feature). I've seen this especially in gaming circles (guilds, clans, etc.) and to a lesser extent in other hobbies or in patient support groups. I know discord isn't a good match for the technical features of forums, but it seems to be a good fit for how people actually used them.
- jerojero 4y ago
  People used private forums before? Pretty much every country and even cities have their own subreddit, games all have their own "official" subreddits, and every hobby under the sun also has their own subreddit. I think that's what forums would be replacing. Maybe I'm not old enough but forums were rarely a very private affair, imo.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- TheCapeGreek 4y ago
  For gaming it makes sense, as it replaces Mumble/TeamSpeak/etc with smoother UI & UX.
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  This was over a decade ago at this point but at one company we ran our own Reddit server (when Reddit was nearly fully open source) and it was set up to work with our Active Directory so if we could use our work logins. It was really really awesome.
auggierose 4y ago
What is a horizontal community? Why you cannot build one with Discord? Which tool do you use instead for this task then?
- jerojero 4y ago
  I tried to set up a community with left-leaning people (politics). So we didn't really want the owner - admin - moderator structure that discord offered, instead we wanted a more open way for the community to self manage. The biggest problem came from the fact that we had been all in a discord server in the past that was deleted by the owner after a political disagreement. So in order for that to not happen again we wanted to have a more "community owned" system so that no one would be able to wield such power without some degree of community acceptance. Sadly, it was not possible to do such a thing on discord as there ALWAYS has to be an owner to the server that's a single individual. Some of these problems can be solved through bots (you can implement very good voting bots) but you're always fighting against the natural structure of the platform, so no solution is ideal.
  - auggierose 4y ago
    Democracy. You're talking about a digital democracy!
MrPatan 4y ago
In Discord you can use the same account to join a new server, Slack makes you create a new identity one for every server you join, it's a pain. I don't know if it changed, but at least it was like that, and I never tried again.
- djhworld 4y ago
  Slack is designed for business use, i.e. you join with your company email address which is linked to a Slack organization for the company you work for (or you get invited to join as an external party) I don't think it's ever been sold as like, a general purpose chat platform like IRC or Discord...it's a shame a bunch of OSS projects decided to settle on Slack for their community chat.
rkagerer 4y ago
> Forums weren't replaced by... Well, for me they were never replaced. I still frequent them regularly for some of the best communities and community-based support around (eg. fortunately vendors of my 3D printing and PCB manufacturing equipment host good ones).
eertami 4y ago
> mainly that it's not very good for long-form or persistent messaging like a forum. Discord recently added Forum Channels to try and capture this segment as well. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-Forum-Channels-FAQ https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-...
- jerojero 4y ago
  Yes, I saw. It's kind of an awful feature though. I think the best approach to a mix of forum and discord-like communities is the app "aether.app" though it had a weird protocol behind it and has been abandoned. But the UI/UX although still perfectible seemed to hit a very nice sweet-spot for me.

rvense 4y ago

> Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Technically, reddit and Discourse is more like forums, but a lot of things that would have been a forum 15 years ago are now Discord "servers".

ajkjk 4y ago
True, they were just Reddit or FB groups in the meantime.
- stoobs 4y ago
  Yup, FB Groups was really the nail in the coffin for a lot of forums. Source - Me, ex large-ish forum admin. Reddit and Discord piled the dirt on top and added the headstone.

philippejara 4y ago

>Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. From my experience there's a split, more "generalist" forums did get "replaced" by reddit, by subs such as technology, games, news, etc. More "in-depth" forums where you expected to see the same guys working on something or having matches together etc I've seen being almost always replaced by discord:fighting games forums(even for games with good MM), dev/security/cracking forums, really anything that isn't "mass appeal".

lawgimenez 4y ago

Microsoft execs salivating at your comment. It won’t take long and Microsoft will buy Discord.

mildchalupa 4y ago

It's as though there is a life cycle of an applications development. Early the application is sleek, perhaps not feature rich however instead simple, concise. Either through scope creep, changed ownership or continuous addition of features the application becomes bloated. This could also be the stage of commercialization by way of adds. Finally the application dies as users move onward. This seems to be fairly common and it seems that as these applications and companies rise and fall that they each bring there own flavor to the mix. Google maps was concise in 2012, today the app requires a greater number of user inputs to enter a destination for example

bee_rider 4y ago
This is amplified for chat programs. They are not really all that technically interesting anymore. They are just "good" at first while they are trying to acquire new users, and providing services for free to so. Simple and light, because there's no need to add gimmicky features to attract new users -- Free is free, and anyway the competition has recently become awful and bloated in an attempt to figure out what the magic feature is that will justify their aggressive monetization scheme. Eventually good chat program runs out of runway, gets acquired (wow look at that userbase!) or needs to monetize on their own, and becomes the bad chat program. And the cycle continues.

Lazare 4y ago

> Forums weren't replaced by discord. Forums were replaced by Reddit. Although you post still stands, I think you're very wrong in thinking about the reasoning why people use one or another platform. There may be some contexts where that's true, but overwhelmingly I've seen Discord replacing forums, particularly for small, closed groups. Wheereas I've never so much as heard of any group adopting a private subreddit! But tons have ended up with a discord as their central social point (whether or not they need or use the voice feature). I've seen this especially in gaming circles (guilds, clans, etc.) and to a lesser extent in other hobbies or in patient support groups. I know discord isn't a good match for the technical features of forums, but it seems to be a good fit for how people actually used them.

jerojero 4y ago
People used private forums before? Pretty much every country and even cities have their own subreddit, games all have their own "official" subreddits, and every hobby under the sun also has their own subreddit. I think that's what forums would be replacing. Maybe I'm not old enough but forums were rarely a very private affair, imo.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TheCapeGreek 4y ago
For gaming it makes sense, as it replaces Mumble/TeamSpeak/etc with smoother UI & UX.
RandallBrown 4y ago
This was over a decade ago at this point but at one company we ran our own Reddit server (when Reddit was nearly fully open source) and it was set up to work with our Active Directory so if we could use our work logins. It was really really awesome.

auggierose 4y ago

What is a horizontal community? Why you cannot build one with Discord? Which tool do you use instead for this task then?

jerojero 4y ago
I tried to set up a community with left-leaning people (politics). So we didn't really want the owner - admin - moderator structure that discord offered, instead we wanted a more open way for the community to self manage. The biggest problem came from the fact that we had been all in a discord server in the past that was deleted by the owner after a political disagreement. So in order for that to not happen again we wanted to have a more "community owned" system so that no one would be able to wield such power without some degree of community acceptance. Sadly, it was not possible to do such a thing on discord as there ALWAYS has to be an owner to the server that's a single individual. Some of these problems can be solved through bots (you can implement very good voting bots) but you're always fighting against the natural structure of the platform, so no solution is ideal.
- auggierose 4y ago
  Democracy. You're talking about a digital democracy!

MrPatan 4y ago

In Discord you can use the same account to join a new server, Slack makes you create a new identity one for every server you join, it's a pain. I don't know if it changed, but at least it was like that, and I never tried again.

djhworld 4y ago
Slack is designed for business use, i.e. you join with your company email address which is linked to a Slack organization for the company you work for (or you get invited to join as an external party) I don't think it's ever been sold as like, a general purpose chat platform like IRC or Discord...it's a shame a bunch of OSS projects decided to settle on Slack for their community chat.

rkagerer 4y ago

> Forums weren't replaced by... Well, for me they were never replaced. I still frequent them regularly for some of the best communities and community-based support around (eg. fortunately vendors of my 3D printing and PCB manufacturing equipment host good ones).

eertami 4y ago

> mainly that it's not very good for long-form or persistent messaging like a forum. Discord recently added Forum Channels to try and capture this segment as well. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-Forum-Channels-FAQ https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-...

jerojero 4y ago
Yes, I saw. It's kind of an awful feature though. I think the best approach to a mix of forum and discord-like communities is the app "aether.app" though it had a weird protocol behind it and has been abandoned. But the UI/UX although still perfectible seemed to hit a very nice sweet-spot for me.