Comment by ddtaylor
13 days ago
I think the Discord situation is a bit different.
Getting everyone to switch away from Discord has been hard because getting everyone to spontaneously switch with no clear benefit hasn't worked. They want to just keep using the app and get back into a game with their friend.
It's different to lock a door and task users with getting the key to come back in. This is more similar to an MMORPG that kills their audience because they cause the core group to stop playing and then all of the other players experiences get worse, which causes a downward trend that avalanches.
> getting everyone to spontaneously switch with no clear benefit hasn't worked
Somehow Discord pulled it off. It really didn't have much of an edge over the other chat apps at launch, just was slightly easier to use because it was simpler. A new site launching now could easily have that over Discord.
You're ignoring the massive edge it had over TeamSpeak and Mumble. Back when Discord was launched, it was significantly better than its competitors and the cherry on top was that you didn't have to install anything or host your own server, just make an account.
It also competed with Skype at the time which was one of the closest comparisons, but it had just been purchased by Microsoft and was being killed.