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Discord should put out a quick Reddit clone. I imagine they already share a lot of the same users. How much would it take? Make the forum feature more like a su

Discord should put out a quick Reddit clone. I imagine they already share a lot of the same users. How much would it take? Make the forum feature more like a subreddit for the server, improve discoverability of discord servers, make a “front page” that aggregates threads from popular servers...

brigandish 3y ago
The question that should come up in a pitch like that is "if Reddit couldn't make money doing that, why would we?" If hubris is the only differentiator then it's not a good reason. So, why would Discord take on such a large undertaking?
- replwoacause 3y ago
  Well spez isn’t exactly a good businessman, so under different leadership I think Reddit could be profitable.
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    What could he do differently? I think it is very clear that a paid subscription couldn't compete with ads. Discord ARPU less than <$3, while Facebook ARPU is something like $30 for US. And I think if discord penetrates to more general circle, it's ARPU would decrease further.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      > What could he do differently? Give the image of a decent company. That feels dumb, but people's willingness to pay is affected a lot by their perception of what they're paying for. I payed for 3 reddit apps, and never felt like paying for reddit itself as they went downhill. It always felts like they're accepting users like me despite their personal convictions, and I'm half abusing their platform by looking at decent content instead of the flaming hell of subs they had as default and then as prominent subs. Their handling of many of the most public issues has been botched to no end, and their relationship with the mods has always been adversarial. As a counterpoint, people donate to Wikipedia, pay for patreons, push money on Youtube. None of these corporations are perfect, and they have their controversies, but not spitting on the community at every turn helps a lot, to the point where the calculation on what you pay for what you get can be more skewed, or even negative, and it still works out. PS: I see the same dynamic for Twitter, there's no way I'd pay for anything on Twitter at this point, when paying for better instances of Mastodon looks like a long term positive action.
      - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
        > That feels dumb Because it is dumb. Reddit is and has always been for profit company. To justify its valuation of $10B, it will need to generate at least $1-2B of revenue. Wikimedia has $165M revenue in comparison. No board member will be content with such small return.
        makeitdouble 3y ago
        You make it sound like needing to make 10x more money justifies keeping execs that are 10x dumber. I'm not sure that's how it works.
- cdash 3y ago
  Because discord has actually convinced people to pay for it.
- icapybara 3y ago
  This is a good counterpoint, but I would say that if they can’t make money off of having Reddit-like features, how are they making money off Discord in the first place? They aren’t that different. The reason to add Reddit features to Discord would be to kill a competitor (Reddit).
klabb3 3y ago
As a product discord is one of the best. But, it’s riddled with exactly the same incentive issues that eventually build up to the crisis we’re seeing now. Begging for another overlord isn’t going to solve any problems, just kick the can down the road. We need something fundamentally different, whether it’s fediverse-style or just a different licensing on the content. I don’t know. But this pump and dump VC to IPO to “value-extraction” is guaranteed failure. Perhaps some businesses cannot exist without that, but a CRUD forum certainly could.
benatkin 3y ago
I'll take a company that's currently doing similar stuff to its userbase for 500, Alex.
mock-possum 3y ago
Please god not more discord
alwayslikethis 3y ago
Guess what, Discord already doesn't allow third party clients. It is also an information black hole, with no proper indexing and users are not allowed to download logs. It's just worse than Reddit, even without API.
- icapybara 3y ago
  I know it doesn’t allow third party clients, but the difference here is that I like the discord app.
seydor 3y ago
why would they want to?
nubinetwork 3y ago
Discord already has threading, its just that nobody ever uses it.
Ekaros 3y ago
Discord doesn't want to listen to the users either. Looking at the current username fiasco. Change of system for idiotic reasons that no one wants or really asked for...

brigandish 3y ago

The question that should come up in a pitch like that is "if Reddit couldn't make money doing that, why would we?" If hubris is the only differentiator then it's not a good reason. So, why would Discord take on such a large undertaking?

replwoacause 3y ago
Well spez isn’t exactly a good businessman, so under different leadership I think Reddit could be profitable.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  What could he do differently? I think it is very clear that a paid subscription couldn't compete with ads. Discord ARPU less than <$3, while Facebook ARPU is something like $30 for US. And I think if discord penetrates to more general circle, it's ARPU would decrease further.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    > What could he do differently? Give the image of a decent company. That feels dumb, but people's willingness to pay is affected a lot by their perception of what they're paying for. I payed for 3 reddit apps, and never felt like paying for reddit itself as they went downhill. It always felts like they're accepting users like me despite their personal convictions, and I'm half abusing their platform by looking at decent content instead of the flaming hell of subs they had as default and then as prominent subs. Their handling of many of the most public issues has been botched to no end, and their relationship with the mods has always been adversarial. As a counterpoint, people donate to Wikipedia, pay for patreons, push money on Youtube. None of these corporations are perfect, and they have their controversies, but not spitting on the community at every turn helps a lot, to the point where the calculation on what you pay for what you get can be more skewed, or even negative, and it still works out. PS: I see the same dynamic for Twitter, there's no way I'd pay for anything on Twitter at this point, when paying for better instances of Mastodon looks like a long term positive action.
    - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
      > That feels dumb Because it is dumb. Reddit is and has always been for profit company. To justify its valuation of $10B, it will need to generate at least $1-2B of revenue. Wikimedia has $165M revenue in comparison. No board member will be content with such small return.
      - makeitdouble 3y ago
        You make it sound like needing to make 10x more money justifies keeping execs that are 10x dumber. I'm not sure that's how it works.
cdash 3y ago
Because discord has actually convinced people to pay for it.
icapybara 3y ago
This is a good counterpoint, but I would say that if they can’t make money off of having Reddit-like features, how are they making money off Discord in the first place? They aren’t that different. The reason to add Reddit features to Discord would be to kill a competitor (Reddit).

klabb3 3y ago

As a product discord is one of the best. But, it’s riddled with exactly the same incentive issues that eventually build up to the crisis we’re seeing now. Begging for another overlord isn’t going to solve any problems, just kick the can down the road. We need something fundamentally different, whether it’s fediverse-style or just a different licensing on the content. I don’t know. But this pump and dump VC to IPO to “value-extraction” is guaranteed failure. Perhaps some businesses cannot exist without that, but a CRUD forum certainly could.

benatkin 3y ago

I'll take a company that's currently doing similar stuff to its userbase for 500, Alex.

mock-possum 3y ago

Please god not more discord

alwayslikethis 3y ago

Guess what, Discord already doesn't allow third party clients. It is also an information black hole, with no proper indexing and users are not allowed to download logs. It's just worse than Reddit, even without API.

icapybara 3y ago
I know it doesn’t allow third party clients, but the difference here is that I like the discord app.

seydor 3y ago

why would they want to?

nubinetwork 3y ago

Discord already has threading, its just that nobody ever uses it.

Ekaros 3y ago

Discord doesn't want to listen to the users either. Looking at the current username fiasco. Change of system for idiotic reasons that no one wants or really asked for...