I have chosen Discord for my platform review as it was not particularly popular among the general public and is more applicable for the gaming community. It is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application, but it also involves text, image and video communication. Jason Citron came up with the idea and brought it onto Hammer & Chisel before Discord became its own entity. It first found its success on Reddit, surprising, with Redditors replacing their subreddits’ (basically a category of forum) chat system with Discord in mid-late 2015, then it found its break in the eSports and gaming cycle. It currently has 14 million daily players.
Discord chat of a FIFA streamer on YouTube
The innovation of Discord is in its details. As mentioned, it did not even start its success initially in its intended field. It also fits more of a niche rather than a large, accessible market. Other products like FaceTime and Skype definitely gear more toward the general public direction, but they do have their drawbacks in relying heavily on connection for video calls and a limit in sound quality. Discord heavily focuses on sound quality as commands and communications are extremely important in team gaming. There are a number of features as well. A four-digit personal identification number is used to distinguish users with the identical usernames. As the app gained popularity, there are also paid subscriptions to enhance the experience of the app. The middle tier, Discord Nitro, included avatars, emojis, increased maximum file size on uploads and the ability to choose a unique personal id number. The top tier includes access to free games via the Discord game store.
One of its featured uniqueness of the software is actually the unpredictability of the usage of the app itself. It did not started out in the circle it was targeted for but it came back around to be the premiere product for video game communications. It further branched out from that, too. A personal experience I had with Discord was to record a podcast with my friends back home as the audio quality is higher than Skype and it was easier to run alongside YouTube’s live system as we go live for every podcast. There are definitely pros and cons, though. It is rather limited to voice chatting in general. However, it also latched on to a large community and even made its experience friendly with Twitch.tv, which is a huge gaming streaming platform.
A chat history of a podcast recording of me and my friends
As the gaming community continue to gain exposure via the eSports broadcasting and professional sports team having gaming teams, Discord will also continue on its upward trend as a well-loved application within a tight community.