Discord: The Disruption of Group Interaction
How Discord’s gaming ecosystem is disrupting the market.
Discord, based in San Francisco, is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging, and digital platform. In September 2021, Discord raised USD 500 million in a Series H round, doubling their valuation to USD 15 billion only 6 years after launching. Almost 3 times more than Telegram, a platform offering encrypted VoIP, instant messaging, and file sharing launched in 2013. Per September 2021, Discord has over 150 million monthly active users with USD 130 million earnings in 2020 (almost 300% growth from 2019).
Discord is a hot topic in acquisition talks since the beginning of the year. Microsoft were in talks to acquire Discord. But the gaming-focused chatting platform ended the talk in April to stay independent, planning to pursue an IPO. In the beginning of May 2021, Sony announced investment and partnership with Discord. With Discord’s big name in the gaming industry, Sony will integrate PlayStation’s built-in social tools with it with an undisclosed minority stake.
Discord is most eminent to gamers. When playing together, gamers now communicate online through Discord. But over the years, Discord not only disrupted the gaming industry, but online group interaction in general. Users make their own communities and invite other with similar interests to join.
Top 5 User Traffic to discord.app by Country
United States (28.03%)
Canada (5.49%)
United Kingdom (4.02%)
Germany (3.96%)
France (3.40%)
Source: Similarweb
What Discord Did Right
Discord is not the only media offering VoIP and instant messaging. We have Telegram, Line, WeChat, etc. But why did people choose Discord?
Discord built their brand as a platform for all gamers. Discord built an ecosystem for gamers where they can find everything they need in one place. This ecosystem pulled gamers built a community in Discord and forced others to use it as well. And from that existing community Discord slowly enters other communities by showing any community can use Discord.
The Future of Discord
With their go-to market strategy, Discord will continuously grow. Discord disrupts community interaction and make it only convenient using the platform. With its existing ecosystem, it will be hard for communities to leave discord and move to another platform.