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[WSJ] Discord Ends Deal Talks With Microsoft
- Thread starter --R
- Start date
I'm not seeing why people are cheering going public, they will have to increase monetisation to become profitable. Being acquired was the best option, at least then it was more likely to be unchanged.
I wonder if they'll get more aggressive with the Nitro subscription (or additional tiers) if they stay on-course for their IPO.
Dream scenario
Phil: "I'd like to change my order to one Capcom please."
One hundo percento
Sorry, had to lol.
Looking at the current market for tech companies going public. They probably figured they could get way more money from a direct listing then from a sale to Microsoft.
So which of the new monitization options they will be needing to start becoming profitable will make it far better for you?
They have options, try to turn more free users into paying ones, make more money out of the ones that are already paying, or make money out of the free users through ads. But I don't think any of these options can be big enough changes to make it profitable without significantly changing how you use the platform. Bombarding people with ads at least might keep some stuff free, but otherwise, or concurrently, they gotta start turning some basic free features into paid ones, or at least turn them to some extent into paid ones (as you mentioned with limited servers).
Are we so sure about that? Going public means they need to find new ways to make money. Discord ain't a charity and I wonder whether that's better than them being bought by someone that can leverage their network for something else then maximizing discord profit and keeps the platform ad free for example.
Unless they can figure out a way to get a higher percentage of people to pay. It's gonna be hard to convince people to pay the equivalent of a game pass subscription for custom emojis and server boosts. They used to have a game library that came with Nitro which was actually kinda cool, but they canned that. When that happened I got a refund for my nitro as they offered them unconditionally.
Yeah I was hoping for a big company to buy them (preferably not a 1st party console manufacturer though). With an IPO, they'll need a path to profitability pretty quickly.
Righteous because you want them to sell all your information and bombard you with ads, or righteous because they stuck-it to Microsoft and you have a bone to pick with them
If we like a product, we should pay for it. The fact we're getting discord for free is insane right now. What's the big deal with using money to pay for a service you like?
~moral god because I finally paid for WinRAR
~moral god because I finally paid for WinRAR
i pick both. fuck ads, fuck PCs, and fuck being a private company
ppl i'm being very sarcastic rn and im trying very hard to convey that without an /s
with how ms puts ads on the dashboard of their $500 console i have zero reason to think discord would've been ad free with them either
You can remove all of that for free.People who believe that somehow MS would have kept Discord Ad-free.
*Shifty Eyes*
To be real with y'all, there was no scenario where Discord does not start integrating ads into itself. It is only a matter of time.
Microsoft's bid was $12 billion
10 billion always seemed like a ridiculous user acquisition cost considering how many of those users are probably already in the Microsoft Windows/XBOX ecosystem to begin with. I don't know which ways, but I'm sure there are plenty of better ways to spend 10 billion on acquiring new customers.
I don't know if an acquisition was necessarily the best option.
I just think people are fooling themselves if they think Discord isn't going to see significant (and generally undesirable) changes as a public company.
They can ham my ass up with ads, I really just don't want features that are free right now go behind a paywall. I think both were going to happen either way, but going public is the one that definitively will have the most aggressive form of both.People who believe that somehow MS would have kept Discord Ad-free.
*Shifty Eyes*
Christ, they rejected $12 billion? Yeah, not sure what they are planning but if they think they get a lot more by going Public, there will be some major changes coming in how it does business.
Exactly. It's very unlikely they will have that market cap as they are right now so major changes will very likely be coming.
Doing a quick search showed they made an estimated $130 million in revenue by some analysts, mainly off of Nitro, in 2020. No idea what there final earnings were, but they just rejected an offer that was nearly 100x their current revenue. That is a pretty aggressive statement from the company in saying they believe they will make way more money in the future and that going public is the best way to capture that value for themselves.
For sure. I'm just saying that since audio is so hot right now and with investors overhyping similar companies, Discord could ask for more. I think yesterday Casey Newton and Zuck were discussing the deal on Discord and it seemed like they both felt that amount was on the low end considering whats going on at the moment.
Always seemed like a weird fit. MS largely already has equivalent tech (Whether they're using it well or not), so this felt like buying a userbase. Price must not have been right for that.
Edit: Oof, 12 billion? I do not see Discord being worth more than that. They're tech isn't something special, and they don't have any obvious revenue streams.
Edit: Oof, 12 billion? I do not see Discord being worth more than that. They're tech isn't something special, and they don't have any obvious revenue streams.
That's my concern too.
Right now as a user it's a service that's almost too good to be true.
- Free to use
- No ads or paywall
- Powerful feature list
- Great customisability
- Lots of scope for self-made and third party bot integrations
- Pretty much identical experience regardless of whether you're on mobile or desktop (this is a huge plus for me personally as I'm a power user)
I don't think the new start menu that they're launching has any ads but I'm probably wrongPeople who believe that somehow MS would have kept Discord Ad-free.
*Shifty Eyes*
