Voice and text messaging service Discord has 250 million users who send 315 million messages a day. Is its private social model just the future that Facebook, with its recent push for groups, group sharing, and more limited sharing in messages is trying to build?
Private social, which Facebook is pushing hard right now, is the living room, not the town hall.
It's the water cooler, not the stage.
It's what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about in his recent privacy manifesto:
“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever.”
Interestingly, it's also the kind of dark social with a degree of privacy that would get significant amounts of activity on Facebook under the covers and publicly invisible ... therefore getting the company off the hook for allegations of fake news, biases to either liberal or conservative mores, and algorithmic control of public conversation.
I spent some time with Discord CMO Eros Resmini to learn more.
John Koetsier: What is Discord's key to success?
Resmini: First and foremost, Discord started focused on the gaming world and gamers. They needed specific features that general-purpose messengers didn’t have. For example: the ability to jump right into an always-on room, and to seamlessly switch between text and voice.
It turns out that a lot of those same features are also important for making strong social connections. Another example is threaded discussion, which is more more organized and richer, so people don’t lose context.
John Koetsier: What do you think when you look at Facebook's new direction?
Resmini: It's interesting. It's in line with our thinking and the product that we’ve built for the last four years. We’ve built a product that’s focused on privacy and small groups.
The big difference is that Discord is primarily made up of small intimate groups of friends ... generally five to ten people who really care about each other … listen to Spotify together, game together, and watch movies together.
John Koetsier: Those are small groups. What is the largest group on Discord?
Resmini: Probably one of the Fortnite servers … it has about 340,000 users.
The vast majority of users are in much smaller private servers, but we do have some public ones that are communities … in some cases official communities where brands can run it directly, ensuring that users are following the group guidelines.
John Koetsier: Do you think this private groups, private social experience is the future?
Resmini: Well, Discord is not an ad-driven platform so algorithms driving discover and interaction is foreign to us. Discord is mostly driven around an opt-in mechanism where people have taken the time to invite you personally.
So yes, we think the vast majority of people on Discord are going to spend the vast majority of their time in small groups with people they care about. There are also large communities … so people might interact with a large community in between their smaller sessions.
And musicians or eSports teams can create their own verified servers.
John Koetsier: The private social experience brings up a question: content, filtering, and standards for what you allow on Discord.
Resmini: We have a published terms of service which is very strict. If people are found violating it, we terminate them.
We have a policy of not reading people’s private messages, and we do rely on our community to report violations. Because Discord is an opt-in based messaging service, most people are private communities.
We do have the ability to filter out certain images automatically, and we do use technology to manage some of the imagery. Those are blanket across the board ... for example, child pornography.
John Koetsier: Do you see Discord as competing with Facebook? And, do you think Discord could be a workplace tool, almost like Slack?
Resmini: You’re always looking out for people who might compete with you or who might compete with what you’ve built. But there are big differences in our business models: an ad business versus a subscription business and paying for extra services.
Our focus has always been on the consumer, so I really think Slack and Discord are built for different reasons. I’m sure there are folks out there using Discord this way, but it’s not the way we’re building the product.
John Koetsier: Where do you see yourself in two to three years?
Resmini: We’re happily surprised by the success we’ve had so far. We will continue to maintain our focus on privacy.
We see music groups practicing together on Discord, people learning languages, people getting mental health support, or pregnant mothers getting together … there are so many examples of people using Discord.
John Koetsier: Thank you for your time!
