How Long Has Discord Been Out?
Discord‘s Origin Story: Built for Gamers by Gamers
In Discord‘s beginnings, co-founder Jason Citron was searching for a way to reconnect with gamer friends from the early days of online gaming. As he told Mashable, “I come from an infrastructure background because I founded OpenFeint…back in the days when we were playing Halo 2 on the original Xbox, we used to chat with friends using [Xbox voice chat app] Ventrilo. Once Xbox Live came out, that was less necessary. Playing PC games, I started missing the trash talk and banter you get that you don’t usually get over text chat.”
Citron teamed up with Russian developer Stanislav Vishnevskiy, who had over 10 years of engineering experience from Microsoft, Xbox, and Zynga. Together they launched Discord in May 2015 as a solution for easily chatting with friends across games, consoles, and devices.
The name “Discord” stemmed from the idea of creating a service to bring people together into communities of shared interest around games. As Citron told Business Insider, “It comes from the Latin ‘dis’ and ‘cord’. When people come together around games, you get connected.”
While Discord entered a competitive landscape, its laser focus on voice chat quality, intuitive interface, and fostering community growth rather than just monetization put it ahead of prior gamer-focused chat tools. Discord carved out a unique niche that positioned itself for rapid user adoption in the coming years.
Slow Start Despite Rave Reviews
Here is a breakdown of how Discord‘s registered user base grew annually since first launching:
- 2015 – 5 million users
- 2016 – 25 million users
- 2017 – 45 million users
- 2018 – 130 million users
- 2019 – 250 million users
- 2020 – 300 million users
- 2021 – 350 million users
- 2022 – Over 150 million monthly active users
As the stats show, after Discord‘s founding year where it gained 5 million users, growth remained fairly flat under 100 million until 2018 when it suddenly took off exponentially. Early feedback emphasized Discord‘s intuitive UI and seamless blending of text and voice chat. But it still failed to reach mass critical appeal during 2015-2017 while restricted as a gaming chat app.
Comparing Discord‘s Trajectory to Social Media Giants
To fully appreciate the speed of Discord‘s ascent, let‘s compare it to the early growth of other major social platforms when looking at each company‘s first 7 years:
- Founded: 2004
- Hit 100 million users by 2008 (4 years)
- Hit 1 billion users by 2012 (8 years)
- Founded: 2006
- Hit 100 million users by 2012 (6 years)
- Hasn‘t hit 1 billion users as of 2022
- Founded: 2010
- Hit 100 million users by 2013 (3 years)
- Hit 1 billion users by 2018 (8 years)
Discord
- Founded: 2015
- Hit 100 million users by 2018 (3 years)
- Has over 150 million monthly active users currently in 2022 (7 years)
This comparison shows Discord matched Instagram and exceeded Twitter in crossing 100 million users by year 3 of existence. That is lightning fast growth considering Discord had no mobile app for the first couple years, thereby limiting access from mobile devices early on.
The viral growth came from mass appeal beyond gaming as mainstream media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, and BBC started covering the platform. Now with mobile and desktop apps, Discord brings people together through text, voice, but also now video chat with screen sharing.
Why Did Discord Succeed Where Others Failed?
Many gamer chat apps came before Discord but failed to reach its enormous scale. That begs the question – why did Discord break through when other voice chat platforms did not?
A few key advantages Discord leveraged:
- Intuitive design – Easy to use and organize channels across text and voice for seamless conversations rather than rigid forums.
- Cross-platform – Discord works across all devices from console, PC, Mac, Android, iOS with full integration.
- Free – Base Discord has always been free to use rather than paid services blocking user growth like prior voice chat apps.
- Friend invites – Viral sharing tools made it easy to invite friends to shared servers on Discord.
- Customer-obsessed – Discord prides itself on actually listening to user feedback to drive product decisions.
By taking the best elements of existing group chat apps combined with an uncompromising user experience, Discord designed itself for rapid adoption not just by hardcore gamers but everyday internet users.
Monetization That Scales: Subscriptions and Beyond
As Discord‘s co-founder Jason Citron stated, “We don’t have to make money right now, we just have to not die.”
Discord focused first on growth, knowing monetization could come later without needing ads or user data exploitation. In 2017, Discord launched its Nitro subscription service for $9.99 per month or $99 per year.
Nitro removes some usage restrictions, lets users customize profiles further, and enhances the overall Discord experience. Special edition games have also created an added revenue stream along with partnerships.
But advertising, premium content, and enterprise services suggest plenty of additional business model options long-term while retaining its loyal free user base. Discord has mastered sustainable scaling in a way few social apps have before.
Moderation Woes: The Struggle to Police 150 Million Users
However, Discord‘s exponential surge hasn‘t come without growing pains. Any internet community reaching hundreds of millions of users invites moderation challenges.
Controversy erupted in 2017 when white supremacist groups like alt-right used Discord servers for organizing the violent Charlottesville rally. This highlighted difficulties clamping down on objectionable content across gigantic platforms.
In response, Discord adopted a stronger policy explicitly banning hate groups and dangerous organizations. But even in 2022, criticism continues around Discord failing to police raids, threats, and harassment circulating in servers before they spiral out of control.
As a company built on empowering community creation, Discord faces the Sisyphean task of keeping nearly 20 million active servers safe. While Discord has over 300 trained staff moderating content, machine learning helps combat abuse at scale.
Overall, Discord still earns praise for dedicating more resources to protect user privacy and security compared to social media peers like Facebook. But sustaining community health remains an endless balancing act for any digital public square.
150 Million and Beyond: Daily User Engagement
While registered user counts make headlines, looking at daily active usage highlights the sticky staying power of Discord over 7 years since founding.
As of 2022, Discord users spend an average of 4 hours connected to the app per day. On mobile alone, daily engaged users average 95 minutes inside Discord daily – higher than Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or any other major social app.
Over 4 billion messages get sent across Discord’s 19+ million active servers per day. Voice chat dominates as well, with over 200 million hours spent in calls monthly.
Whether texting, talking or streaming video, these eye-popping engagement metrics show what a central hub Discord has become in people’s digital lives beyond gaming.
The World‘s Largest Servers Form Mini-Internets
Let’s dive deeper into some of those biggest Discord servers forming mini-internets of their own within the platform:
Midjourney – This arts community centered around AI image/photo generation bots like Midjourney has a staggering 6.8 million users in its server. Over 600,000 images get shared here weekly driving vibrant discussion about technology’s creative potential.
MINECRAFT – As one of the first gaming servers on Discord, Minecraft now has 900,000 members. This bustling server stays highly active as Minecraft veterans and newcomers find it one-stop for mods, tutorials, recruiting multiplayer teammates and more around their shared obsession.
Roblox – With over 918,000 users, Roblox’s server connects the loyal fanbase around one of gaming’s rising metaverse-like platforms. As Roblox players create and explore millions of 3D worlds, the Discord server serves as community heartbeat for this next-gen immersive gaming revolution.
WallStreetBets – The legendary WallStreetBets Discord reached over 700,000 members before getting banned early 2021 during the GameStop trading frenzy. However, new WallStreetBets servers continue mobilizing legions of retail investors daring enough to take on financial giants.
Kickstarting Internet Cultures and Trends
With Discord’s structure encouraging formation of highly passionate micro-communities, the platform has birthed thriving subcultures driving online trends.
K-pop fandoms, cryptocurrency traders, activist groups, anime fans – these previously niche tribes use Discord as a launch pad spreading their hyper-viral memes and movements across the web.
Hashtags like #wallstreetbets, gaming culture sensations like Twitch streamers, even TikTok dance crazes often start percolating in Discords before detonating as global sensations. The app’s explosive user growth has turned these formerly small subreddits and chat rooms into internet kingmakers.
By aggregating audiences unified by social identity and shared purpose, Discord lights an eternal digital fire stoking cultural revolutions in music, fashion, politics and more.
The Future Looks Bright for Internet‘s ‘Place to Talk‘
For a scrappy upstart that began as a couple gamers‘ side project, Discord exceeding over 150 million monthly active users today is simply extraordinary.
Only a few past internet communities like Reddit or Tumblr have built such loyal followings that they reshape wider web culture. Discord now firmly belongs on that list – perhaps even at the very top.
Its founders‘ motto "fostering human coexistence through communication" means the company measures success not by profits but user happiness. Avoiding the corrosive advertising model poisoning big tech peers, Discord may point towards an ethical internet future.
Discord still feels like a unicorn…a whimsical wunderkind not driven solely by shareholder greed or algorithms. Instead it focuses on granting users agency to cultivate local communities within a flowering digital commons.
Having conquered gaming circles and internet tribes, mainstream culture now beats a path towards these formerly hidden Discord havens. More than ever, people yearn for ways technology can nurture our soul rather than exploit it.
And at least for now, Discord restores hope that maybe, just maybe…online community done right CAN reveal the better angels of our wired nature.
