Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I received a
Speaker 1: request on Twitter to do an episode about the history
Speaker 1: of Discord, the communications platform. Now, if you don't know
Speaker 1: what Discord is, it does help to get a quick overview.
Speaker 1: So from a high level, Discord of software that let's
Speaker 1: users chat with each other either through texting or with
Speaker 1: voice communication or video chat. And it has other features
Speaker 1: as well, and it grew out of gaming culture. We've
Speaker 1: got two founders to talk about, so let's start with
Speaker 1: a man named Jason Citron. He grew up playing video games.
Speaker 1: He received a Nintendo in ne s. The Nintendo entertain
Speaker 1: was stem a groundbreaking console, the one that brought home
Speaker 1: video games back from the dead after the Great Crash
Speaker 1: of the early nineteen eighties, and he was only five
Speaker 1: years old when he got that. He said that when
Speaker 1: he was a kid, all he really wanted to do
Speaker 1: was play games on the n e S and his
Speaker 1: parents essentially told him that if he did all of
Speaker 1: his homework, he could spend as much time playing games
Speaker 1: as he liked. So while other parents might tell their kids, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, you should go outside and play, or otherwise
Speaker 1: limit their screen time, Citron was more or less given
Speaker 1: carte blanche to do all the gaming he wanted to,
Speaker 1: as long as he didn't put off homework or anything
Speaker 1: like that. He has said that when he was around
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen, a friend of his taught him some
Speaker 1: early que Basic programming tricks during a sleepover. So que
Speaker 1: Basic is a very simple programming language, and Citron found
Speaker 1: it really interesting. So of course, the first thing he
Speaker 1: really wanted to do was to make a game. So
Speaker 1: he and his buddy stayed up late while everyone else
Speaker 1: was asleep, and they got to work programming out a
Speaker 1: text adventure. For those of you who have never played
Speaker 1: a text adventure, it's pretty much what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: The game presents the player with text and describes an
Speaker 1: environment and any actions that are going on. Then the
Speaker 1: player types in a command, and if the programmers anticipated
Speaker 1: that command, you get a response that progresses the game
Speaker 1: or perhaps ends it if you made the wrong choice. Now,
Speaker 1: if the programmers didn't anticipate the command, you're likely to
Speaker 1: encounter a failed message. So, for example, if you were
Speaker 1: the type look under rock, and the programmers didn't anticipate
Speaker 1: that action, you might receive the generic response I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. But if they
Speaker 1: did anticipate it, you might get something like you lift
Speaker 1: up the rock and you see an old rusty key,
Speaker 1: or maybe you get you lift up the rock and
Speaker 1: see dirt. What did you expect? It all depends upon
Speaker 1: the programmers. And just for the record, I love old
Speaker 1: text adventure games. Some of them get wicked hard because
Speaker 1: programmers really went out of their way to make obtuse puzzles. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get back to Citron. As he got older, he
Speaker 1: decided he didn't want to just play games. He wanted
Speaker 1: to make them as well, like as a job, not
Speaker 1: just as a hobby. He enrolled in Full Sale University,
Speaker 1: which is a private, for profit university in Florida. I
Speaker 1: know it best as the home of n x T,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the developmental branch of the w
Speaker 1: w E, the professional wrestling organization. Anyway, the school is
Speaker 1: known for its programs and feels like computer animation, audio design,
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. Citron graduated in two thousand
Speaker 1: four with a Bachelor's of Science in game design and development.
Speaker 1: He went on to develop for a few different game studios,
Speaker 1: like Papaya Studio, which, if I'm doing my math correctly,
Speaker 1: would have probably been working on titles like Disney Princess
Speaker 1: Enchanted Journey and Windy Woo Homecoming Warrior Kick In Challenge.
Speaker 1: He was there for less than a year before he
Speaker 1: moved over to Storm Runt Studios, which was probably working
Speaker 1: on licensed properties like Aragon and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Citron
Speaker 1: stayed there for about a year and a half before
Speaker 1: he moved over to Double Fine Productions in two thousand six. Now,
Speaker 1: before I chat about that little part of his career,
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that Papaia Studios and storm
Speaker 1: Front are both no more. Storm Front actually folded first
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight after Sierra Entertainment, which was
Speaker 1: set to publish the company's next game, closed down, and
Speaker 1: I should probably do an episode about Stormfront at some point.
Speaker 1: Papaia Studios stuck around till or so. I'm not actually
Speaker 1: sure what happened with that studio other than it went
Speaker 1: out of business. I couldn't find more detailed information about
Speaker 1: what caused it to do that anyway, onto Double Fine.
Speaker 1: This company, founded by Tim Schaefer, is known for games
Speaker 1: like Psycho Knots and also the remaster version of Grim
Speaker 1: Van Dango, the Brutal Legends game, and more. Citron joined
Speaker 1: that team in two in six, a year after the
Speaker 1: first Psycho Knots game had come out. Citron was there
Speaker 1: for eight months and left in June of two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: Now when you hear about these relatively short stints with companies,
Speaker 1: with just you know, a few months here or a
Speaker 1: year and a half there, you might get the feeling
Speaker 1: that young Citron had itchy feet and he couldn't settle down.
Speaker 1: And that is possibly the case, but it's also possible
Speaker 1: that Citron was working for these companies on a contract basis.
Speaker 1: A lot of studios will bring in freelance game developers
Speaker 1: to help with titles that are in production. These developers
Speaker 1: work alongside full time salaried employees until their contract is over,
Speaker 1: whereupon the freelancer might have to head off in search
Speaker 1: of their next gig. They might get resigned to a
Speaker 1: new contract, but chances are they may just have to
Speaker 1: try and line up their next job. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's what was going on with Citron, but
Speaker 1: I figure it's a pretty fair guess. He had some
Speaker 1: bigger plans in store. However, He really wanted to try
Speaker 1: and create his own own company, but Citron also recognized
Speaker 1: that he didn't really have that kind of experience or background.
Speaker 1: He was a developer, not an entrepreneur, at least not
Speaker 1: yet anyway. He applied to and was accepted by you web,
Speaker 1: which is a company that helps develop people into entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: The focus on fields like app development and gaming. You
Speaker 1: web provides an environment and initial funding for product development,
Speaker 1: sort of like the seed money to get a business going.
Speaker 1: At you Web. Citron began to work with a developer
Speaker 1: named Danielle Castley, and the two of them created a
Speaker 1: game for iOS devices. It was called Aurora Faint and
Speaker 1: it was part RPG, part Tetris like puzzle game. Citron
Speaker 1: described it as quote a puzzle based m m O
Speaker 1: RPG for the iPhone end quote. M m O RPG
Speaker 1: says for massively multiplayer online role playing games, so a
Speaker 1: game that supports lots of players simultaneously and as role
Speaker 1: playing elements to it. The first game was actually fairly modest,
Speaker 1: a single player game with some leader boards, but the
Speaker 1: second attempt was far more ambitious, with chat rooms, asynchronous
Speaker 1: multiplayer support, ghost battling, and more. Ghost battling is where
Speaker 1: you create a profile, and when you're offline, your profile
Speaker 1: is able to play against other players and perform as
Speaker 1: if you are controlling it to some degree. Citron and
Speaker 1: castlely recognize that players liked having ways to interact with
Speaker 1: one another, whether it was to form friendships or talk
Speaker 1: some smack, or you know, just have a conversation about
Speaker 1: anything at all. And you could see that some of
Speaker 1: the concepts that would later transition into what would become
Speaker 1: features and discord we're taking shape. The experience convinced Citron
Speaker 1: to try something bigger. He wanted to build not just
Speaker 1: a game, but a platform for games on iOS. He
Speaker 1: pitched it as Xbox Live but for iPhones, complete with
Speaker 1: chat and video board features. He decided to quote, just
Speaker 1: announce it and see if people would want it end quote,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty seat of your pants approach, like
Speaker 1: you don't even know if you can build it yet,
Speaker 1: You're really just kind of fishing to see if there
Speaker 1: are any bites, and there were. The developers put out
Speaker 1: their announcement, which tech Crunch would pick up and publish.
Speaker 1: So now lots of people were seeing it, and the
Speaker 1: next thing they knew they had four hundred developers indicate
Speaker 1: their interest in this project. Citron and Castley founded open Faint,
Speaker 1: which would focus on building out this platform, and when
Speaker 1: the company launched in March two thousand nine, there were
Speaker 1: fifteen developers signed on with thirty games for this platform,
Speaker 1: not games from open feint, but games that would use
Speaker 1: open feint as the platform. At first, the open feint
Speaker 1: team was really small, with just four or five people
Speaker 1: working on it in the early days. By the end
Speaker 1: of that first year that number was up to fifteen,
Speaker 1: and two years in it was at sixty. And then
Speaker 1: a Japanese mobile game company called g r E or
Speaker 1: GREE made an offer that the founders could not refuse.
Speaker 1: They acquired open feint for the princely sum of one
Speaker 1: hundred four million dollars. Now, sit Tron figured he'd stay
Speaker 1: put as the leader of open feint at least for
Speaker 1: a while. In an interview with Business Insider, he said, quote,
Speaker 1: I will be sticking around for a while. My personal ambition,
Speaker 1: it might come off as a little naive but it's
Speaker 1: a change the world kind of thing. I see open
Speaker 1: Faint as an opportunity for me to help developers create
Speaker 1: what I call shared experiences. You play games, right, so
Speaker 1: you've had experiences like Mario Kart or Fifa where you're
Speaker 1: playing with buddies and right as you're about to win,
Speaker 1: your friend comes up behind you and wins. You throw
Speaker 1: the controller on the ground and yell and scream at
Speaker 1: each other. Those moments of connecting with your friends where
Speaker 1: you can laugh and share like that are so powerful.
Speaker 1: End quote. So again we see yet more signs of
Speaker 1: this idea of communication and community, things that we become
Speaker 1: really important. So if you've used Discord, all of this
Speaker 1: probably sounds a little familiar, right, But we've got another
Speaker 1: founder we need to talk about. So we're gonna leave
Speaker 1: Citron at this stage in his career and switch gears
Speaker 1: to talk about Stennislav Vishnevsky. Now, I gotta preface this
Speaker 1: by saying I found way more information about Citron than
Speaker 1: I did about Vishnevsky. Uh, Citron has been pretty you know,
Speaker 1: much the face of Discord. But here's what I can
Speaker 1: tell you. Vishnevsky earned a degree at California State University
Speaker 1: at Northridge, presumably in computer science or some other field
Speaker 1: related to software engineering. He speaks Russian. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: he worked for a software company called Kassamba Incorporated. That
Speaker 1: quote focused on developing technology solutions within the healthcare industry.
Speaker 1: End quote. That's from Visionevsky's LinkedIn profile, which I found
Speaker 1: very useful trying to find out more about his history.
Speaker 1: He was there for about eight months. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: he was also working on his own project called guild Work.
Speaker 1: Stanislav had developed tools for a Final Fantasy title that
Speaker 1: he recognized could be useful if adapted for other games,
Speaker 1: specifically m m O RPGs. Many m m O RPGs
Speaker 1: allow players to create associations within the games themselves, called guilds,
Speaker 1: but depending on the game, the tools that players have
Speaker 1: at their disposal might make guild management a bit of
Speaker 1: a chore, so some guilds would turn to other tools
Speaker 1: to help coordinate efforts within the guild and facilitate guild communication.
Speaker 1: Guild Work grew out of that need and would expand
Speaker 1: to allow for guild hosting as well. Also, it would
Speaker 1: provide the foothold that the company Discord would need later on.
Speaker 1: I'll explain when we get there. So his next job
Speaker 1: was as a software engineer at a company called Kabam,
Speaker 1: which developed social games like Kingdoms of Camelot. He was
Speaker 1: there for less than a year, leaving at the end
Speaker 1: of twenty eleven, and then he joined that Japanese game
Speaker 1: company I mentioned earlier called Gree International Incorporated in early
Speaker 1: So gree had acquired open Faint in two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: and Stan joined Green in And now we've got our
Speaker 1: two Discord co founders working at the same general company,
Speaker 1: with Citron still leading the Open Faint team within Gree.
Speaker 1: But shortly after that, Citron would found a new company
Speaker 1: initially called Hammer and Chisel, and Vishnevsky would move over
Speaker 1: to join on as a craftsman. According to Vishnevsky's LinkedIn profile,
Speaker 1: which I think is cool. An early project of THEIRS
Speaker 1: was called uh Fates Forever. It was a game, a
Speaker 1: mobile mobile game for tablets and smartphones, and it was
Speaker 1: a multiplayer online battle arena or mobile similar to games
Speaker 1: like League of Legends Dota to or smite the game
Speaker 1: and get a whole lot of traction. It did receive
Speaker 1: good reviews, it's just didn't get, you know, widely adopted.
Speaker 1: Vishnevsky was a developer on that title, and he campaigned
Speaker 1: for the freedom to work on tools and features that
Speaker 1: would allow players to communicate with one another in game.
Speaker 1: This work, which aligned with Citron's earlier attempts with Aurora
Speaker 1: Faint and Open Faint, soon became a bigger deal than
Speaker 1: the game that it spun off from, and so we
Speaker 1: saw the convergence of efforts to create opportunities for gamers
Speaker 1: to communicate with one another while playing games, and these
Speaker 1: efforts would combine to form the seeds of a new
Speaker 1: software solution, which would ultimately become Discord. I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about the coalescing of Discord in just a moment, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. So before we dive
Speaker 1: into Discord proper, let's talk a bit more about what
Speaker 1: made Jay and in Stanislav feel like it was something
Speaker 1: worth doing in the first place. Now, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of multiplayer games out there, and obviously the whole
Speaker 1: appeal to these games is that you're playing with other
Speaker 1: real people. You're all simultaneously in the game, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you want to be able to chat with folks. This
Speaker 1: is particularly true for team based games, in which chatting
Speaker 1: with your teammates is key to coordinating a strategy and
Speaker 1: being effective against other teams or against nonplayer characters. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is a lot of these
Speaker 1: multiplayer platforms are pretty awful when it comes to supporting
Speaker 1: team or multiplayer chat. Now, some are better than others,
Speaker 1: but in a lot of cases, it feels as though
Speaker 1: the actual communication tools are more of an afterthought. In
Speaker 1: a way that is understandable. I mean, the team needs
Speaker 1: to make sure that the actual gameplay elements of whatever
Speaker 1: the game title is happen to be solid. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be much fun if you joined a multiplayer game that
Speaker 1: had great communication tools but the game itself was terrible.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you'd probably be able to communicate easily,
Speaker 1: but you would all likely spend your time complaining about
Speaker 1: how crappy the game was. Like Jason had said several
Speaker 1: years earlier, he really loved that experience of playing a
Speaker 1: game in the same physical space as his friends, Like
Speaker 1: you're all in the living room, all on the couch,
Speaker 1: and you're playing elbow to elbow and being able to
Speaker 1: talk in real time while playing the game, but the
Speaker 1: tools available to gamers around twelve or so were, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly limited, like teams speak in Skype or the two
Speaker 1: big ones, and they also tended to be really resourced heavy.
Speaker 1: So if you were trying to run a game and
Speaker 1: this separate voice over Internet protocol program, you know, like Skype,
Speaker 1: your computer might start chugging a bit and your gaming
Speaker 1: experience could suffer because now your CPU has to deal
Speaker 1: with not just the demands of the game, but whatever
Speaker 1: communications software you're running at the same time. Those were
Speaker 1: some of the thoughts driving the push to develop better
Speaker 1: in game communication tools for Fates Forever, the game that
Speaker 1: Hammer and Chisel was working on, except the team recognized
Speaker 1: that it might be better to develop something more broad,
Speaker 1: something that could stand as its own communication platform and
Speaker 1: not be tied to a specific game title, and so
Speaker 1: Citron made the call to shift the focus to creating
Speaker 1: the platform that could serve all games, similar to how
Speaker 1: he wanted to make an Xbox Live environment for iOS
Speaker 1: devices years earlier. It wasn't an easy decision, though, because
Speaker 1: it meant backing off of Fates Forever, It meant abandoning
Speaker 1: the game that they had been working on, and had launched,
Speaker 1: and this was not long after it had launched. It
Speaker 1: was like a year later, not even a full year,
Speaker 1: and the game died in early death. It also meant
Speaker 1: that he had to layoff the five full time employees
Speaker 1: who had been working on the game, so it was
Speaker 1: a big decision and not an easy one. Hammer and
Speaker 1: Chisel then evolved into Discord the company with Citron a
Speaker 1: CEO and Vishnevsky as Chief Technology Officer or ct O.
Speaker 1: The team began to lay out what they wanted to
Speaker 1: achieve with this service. The Discord software needed to give
Speaker 1: gamers the ability to create rooms for chat. It needed
Speaker 1: to support text chat, voice chat, and then later on
Speaker 1: even video chat. It needed to be a lightweight type
Speaker 1: of apps, something that wouldn't put too big a strain
Speaker 1: on the hardware. After all, the original idea was that
Speaker 1: Discord was for gamers, and a lot of gamers really
Speaker 1: obsessed over getting the most out of their gaming rigs settings.
Speaker 1: You don't want to compromise on the gaming experience because
Speaker 1: your chat app is hogging all the resources. While Discord
Speaker 1: aimed to avoid the issues gamers had with services like
Speaker 1: Skype and team Speak, it didn't always work. Out There
Speaker 1: have been times and Discords past when gamers have seen
Speaker 1: Discord get a little hungry for CPU and memory re sources. Now,
Speaker 1: to explain why this happens would require going into a
Speaker 1: lot of technical detail that I'm going to be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand. I'm not a programmer, so I
Speaker 1: have a bit of a grasp on it. But rather
Speaker 1: than stumble around hoping that I'm telling you the right thing,
Speaker 1: instead I'll say that depending upon the settings of a
Speaker 1: computer and on Discord and the specific build of Discord
Speaker 1: that you were using, sometimes users were fine, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they saw Discord alone sapping of a CPUs output. The
Speaker 1: team also wanted Discord to be multi platform, so they
Speaker 1: wanted to work on PCs, max, mobile devices and in browsers,
Speaker 1: and it needed to run smoothly on all of those
Speaker 1: platforms and provide a reliable service. To get started, Citron
Speaker 1: secured funding from the ub nine plus incubator company and
Speaker 1: several others, including ten Sent, the Chinese company that owns
Speaker 1: a stake in several video game companies out there. The
Speaker 1: team build out the product, prepping it for its public
Speaker 1: release in May, and in many ways it is very
Speaker 1: much like a web browser. In fact, you can access
Speaker 1: Discord over the web, or you can download it as
Speaker 1: a native app on a desktop device or mobile device,
Speaker 1: and the activities in one instance happened across all other instances.
Speaker 1: So if for some reason, you're running the Discord app
Speaker 1: on your laptop, Okay, so you've got your laptop going,
Speaker 1: you've got the actual Discord program running. Then you've got
Speaker 1: a second laptop and you use it to open up
Speaker 1: a browser and go to the web based Discord service.
Speaker 1: And then you also had your smartphone out and you
Speaker 1: activated the Discord app on your smartphone, and you all
Speaker 1: three and in all three instances, you navigate to the
Speaker 1: same server and the same channel. Typing something in on
Speaker 1: your laptop that's running the app would publish it to everything.
Speaker 1: You would see it on your phone, you would see
Speaker 1: it on the second laptop, and so on. Now that's
Speaker 1: assuming again that all three of these devices are logged
Speaker 1: into the same server and same channel, which brings us
Speaker 1: to how Discord organizes stuff. So Discord has a kind
Speaker 1: of hierarchy of organization, and at the top is the server.
Speaker 1: The server is kind of like the community base of operations.
Speaker 1: When you create a discord server. You're not actually designating
Speaker 1: a specific machine on your network to act like a
Speaker 1: web server. Instead, the server is the dedicated online gathering space.
Speaker 1: I kind of think of it like a Facebook page
Speaker 1: in a way, if you are making a page on
Speaker 1: Facebook dedicated to something. Uh, it's sort of similar. Now,
Speaker 1: when you think about it another way, you can see
Speaker 1: why this naming convention makes sense. On the web, you've
Speaker 1: got clients and you've got servers. Now, the client is
Speaker 1: typically something like a browser. So let's say you are
Speaker 1: on your computer and you're surfing the web. To use
Speaker 1: an incredibly outdated phrase, the browser you use, whether it's Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox,
Speaker 1: or something else, that is the client. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're using your browser to look up an article on
Speaker 1: Wikipedia about Big Trouble in Little China, which, as we
Speaker 1: all know, is the best movie that was ever made.
Speaker 1: You type the title into Wikipedia's search bar and you
Speaker 1: hit intern And when you do that, you've sent a
Speaker 1: command to your client to request that specific web page
Speaker 1: from the web server that's hosting Wikipedia. So the client
Speaker 1: relays your request, which goes out over the Internet. The
Speaker 1: request is encoded so that the message will eventually get
Speaker 1: to the correct destination, that destination being the web server.
Speaker 1: That request ultimately goes to that web server that processes
Speaker 1: it and then returns the Wikipedia page. So the server
Speaker 1: since the appropriate data back to the client, which is
Speaker 1: your browser, and that's where you can see it. So
Speaker 1: with Discord, the app on your phone or desktop or
Speaker 1: the tab in your browser is the client. It's how
Speaker 1: you are accessing the community you are interested in, and
Speaker 1: that is the server, and messages that you type in
Speaker 1: the client get posted to the server, which all clients
Speaker 1: connected to that server can see at least all clients
Speaker 1: connected to that server that have permissions to view the
Speaker 1: message within whatever channel they can see it. So within
Speaker 1: the server, as I mentioned, you have channels, and these
Speaker 1: can be text based or voice based. So you could
Speaker 1: create a server for your gaming friends, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the way the service was originally conceived, and you
Speaker 1: can create specific voice channels for different games, because maybe
Speaker 1: you're a group of gaming friends is really into a
Speaker 1: lot of different games, and maybe that group has gotten
Speaker 1: pretty big and not everyone is playing the same games
Speaker 1: at the same time, So you can have different voice
Speaker 1: channels dedicated to the various games and have multiple conversations
Speaker 1: happening in separate channels, and you only hear the off
Speaker 1: that's relevant to whichever channel you are in. So there's
Speaker 1: a conversation. Let's say you're playing Rainbow six Siege and
Speaker 1: other people are playing League of Legends. Well, you're in
Speaker 1: the Rainbow six Siege room. You've chosen to go into
Speaker 1: that channel. You only hear the conversation that's going on
Speaker 1: in that channel. Meanwhile, over in the Legal Legends channel,
Speaker 1: people are arguing about which path they need to take
Speaker 1: in order to defeat the other team, and they're distinct,
Speaker 1: so there's no cross talk. You can make channels public,
Speaker 1: meaning anyone can connect to them, or you can make
Speaker 1: them private and only allow certain people to see them,
Speaker 1: which makes you know sense and building out a server
Speaker 1: sounds like it could be daunting, but it's actually pretty simple.
Speaker 1: So let me give you an example. I recently created
Speaker 1: a tech stuff discord server, which I haven't really publicized yet,
Speaker 1: and so for the moment, I'm the only member of
Speaker 1: this server. But that's okay. When it's ready for prime time,
Speaker 1: i'll chat about it. I'll put the link up on
Speaker 1: the Twitter bio. I'll make sure it goes out and
Speaker 1: people can join. Then Anyway, the tech Stuff server will
Speaker 1: be a community where listeners can go to chat with
Speaker 1: each other and share pictures and videos and bad puns
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. Within the server, I
Speaker 1: can make different channels to help serve the community. Channels
Speaker 1: can be text based or they can be voice chats.
Speaker 1: So I might make a channel that's just dedicated to
Speaker 1: episode suggestions, and if you have a great idea for
Speaker 1: an episode, you can pop in there and submit it.
Speaker 1: Or I might make one for a community tech support,
Speaker 1: where people who know what they're talking about can offer
Speaker 1: advice to the technologically challenged. Sometimes I'm one of those
Speaker 1: categories and sometimes I'm the other one. Or maybe there
Speaker 1: could be a channel just for shooting the breeze to
Speaker 1: discuss the latest in tech news or anything else. Really,
Speaker 1: there's no limit on what you can build out. You
Speaker 1: could get super granular. So for tech Stuff, I might
Speaker 1: make categories for every possible topic, Like I could make
Speaker 1: a sub category just for smartphone discussions, or maybe I
Speaker 1: decided to get even more detailed than that, and I
Speaker 1: make a subcategory for iOS and a different one for Android,
Speaker 1: or heck, maybe I go even more detailed, and I
Speaker 1: start making subcategories for specific models of phones. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: the more in the weeds you get with these subcategories,
Speaker 1: the fewer people are going to join them because they
Speaker 1: won't really pertain to them. So sometimes it pays to
Speaker 1: be a bit bigger picture with your topics to create
Speaker 1: more of a communal space. So you create your server,
Speaker 1: you build out some various channels that you think you're
Speaker 1: gonna need. You can always add more as needed. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue that you shouldn't spend too much time
Speaker 1: building out the basic channels, because as your community grows,
Speaker 1: you will learn what it is you need and you
Speaker 1: can build further. At that point, you've got your voice
Speaker 1: chat channels, you've got your text channels. Now you just
Speaker 1: need to invite people to the server or else. It's
Speaker 1: like the tech Stuff server. It's a waste lam that
Speaker 1: only you occupy and you just quietly walk across the
Speaker 1: desert landscape. So you can invite other people on Discord individually,
Speaker 1: sort of like adding friends on a platform like Facebook,
Speaker 1: or you can also post a link to the server
Speaker 1: in some trusted space. It really depends on what approach
Speaker 1: you want to take. If you want a server that's
Speaker 1: just for you and your close friends, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to invite each person individually. If it's meant to be
Speaker 1: a larger communal space for something, maybe then you take
Speaker 1: a bigger step. But that trusted space thing is a
Speaker 1: really important detail. If your goal is to have a
Speaker 1: focused community, publishing a Discord link publicly might not be
Speaker 1: a great idea. It's kind of like how posting a
Speaker 1: zoom meeting link publicly can be a really bad idea.
Speaker 1: Is I think a lot of people learned the hard
Speaker 1: way back in. If you just want the most people
Speaker 1: you can get into your server, then publishing the link
Speaker 1: everywhere might be your go to strategy. But if your
Speaker 1: aim is to actually foster a community, you probably want
Speaker 1: to be a bit more selective with Discord. You can
Speaker 1: also designate roles to specific users, and roles give users privileges. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might want some of your most trusted
Speaker 1: community members to be moderators who can step in if
Speaker 1: someone is being a problem. Maybe you've got a jerk
Speaker 1: face who's spamming one of the channels, or they're breaking
Speaker 1: other rules like posting not safe for work content in
Speaker 1: a family friendly chat environment. Moderators have various powers that
Speaker 1: you give them. They can have like the power to
Speaker 1: mute for example, UH they mute other other users so
Speaker 1: that their abuse is no longer visible. Or they might
Speaker 1: delete posts, or they might even ban people and help
Speaker 1: you maintain order, so they sort of become your digital bouncers.
Speaker 1: On top of that, people have made tons of different
Speaker 1: automated scripts called bots for Discord. These bots can flesh
Speaker 1: out what you can do with the Discord platform. Installing
Speaker 1: a boat requires a person with administrator level access, someone
Speaker 1: who has that level of authority within a server, to
Speaker 1: grant permissions to the bot. These permissions are really similar
Speaker 1: to the kind of stuff you see when you install
Speaker 1: a new app on your phone or on your desktop.
Speaker 1: You might see a checklist that includes stuff like the
Speaker 1: bot will be able to see your email address and
Speaker 1: your contacts, that kind of thing. So it's a good
Speaker 1: idea to give those lists a good look to make
Speaker 1: sure you're comfortable with it before you install the bot.
Speaker 1: In return, a bot might do one of a billion
Speaker 1: different things for you. It's all dependent on the specific bot.
Speaker 1: There are moderator bots that can monitor chat rooms for
Speaker 1: banned words. For example, uh these bots might be able
Speaker 1: to do everything that a human moderator would be able
Speaker 1: to do. Delete the offending post, mute the troll with
Speaker 1: a warning, maybe even banned the user. Or a bot
Speaker 1: might do something simpler like give account on how many
Speaker 1: people are actually part of the server. I don't need
Speaker 1: that one for tech stuff, because I know that number
Speaker 1: is one heavy sigh. Oh wait, that's a stage direction.
Speaker 1: Starting in Discord supported video chat and screen sharing as well.
Speaker 1: That was added so two years after they launched. The
Speaker 1: features are pretty robust, though the layout could seem a
Speaker 1: little odd to someone who has never really used it before.
Speaker 1: It reminds me a lot of old school chat rooms
Speaker 1: from the early days of the public Internet, like even
Speaker 1: stuff that existed before the web did, when I would
Speaker 1: use tell Neet to log into chat servers and make
Speaker 1: friends that way kind of makes me think of that. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about how Discord was
Speaker 1: received upon launch and how it's changed since then, But
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. So, the Discord team
Speaker 1: worked on making the chat feature from the Fates Forever
Speaker 1: game into its own distinct product, and it wasn't easy,
Speaker 1: not just because they were repurposing and add on feature
Speaker 1: to become its own standalone thing, but also because the
Speaker 1: company itself, as I mentioned, had to change from being
Speaker 1: a video game developer into something else, and it took
Speaker 1: about six months just for the company to change and
Speaker 1: have its new culture and its new organization in order
Speaker 1: to support its new purpose. According to Citron, quote, when
Speaker 1: we decided to go all in on Discord, we had
Speaker 1: maybe ten users. We would show it to our friends
Speaker 1: and they'd be like, this is cool, and then they'd
Speaker 1: never use it. End quote. As someone who makes podcasts,
Speaker 1: I understand this feeling. I have maybe two friends who
Speaker 1: listened to my shows, but let's be fair, most of
Speaker 1: them get enough of me already. Discord marks May thirteen
Speaker 1: as its launch day, not because that's when the service
Speaker 1: officially launched, but because that's when people that the developers
Speaker 1: didn't know personally started to actually use the service. A
Speaker 1: Reddit user posted about Discord in a subreddit dedicated to
Speaker 1: the game Final Fantasy fourteen, and for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: the Final Fantasy series in general is a line of
Speaker 1: fantasy genre role playing games. Most of those titles are
Speaker 1: single player games, but a couple of them aren't, and
Speaker 1: one of those is Final Fantasy eleven and the others
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy fourteen, and they are both m m O
Speaker 1: RPG style games. The original version of Final Fantasy fourteen
Speaker 1: launched in two but due to some pretty major problems
Speaker 1: with the game, it got shut down. In Square Nicks,
Speaker 1: the company behind the series, launched a new version, essentially
Speaker 1: rebuilt from scratch with a new game engine and everything,
Speaker 1: and that one came out in that was the focus
Speaker 1: of this particular subredit. So in that subredit, someone posted
Speaker 1: a link to a Discord server where gamers could go
Speaker 1: and chat about a new expansion pack for a Final
Speaker 1: Fantasy fourteen. The Discord co founders, eager to foster their
Speaker 1: new product, jumped onto the server as well, and they
Speaker 1: joined the voice chat to talk with players. So now
Speaker 1: the guys who built Discord are in the same voice
Speaker 1: chat as people who are using it in order to
Speaker 1: play Final Fantasy fourteen. This inspired some of the red
Speaker 1: users to go back to Reddit and mentioned that, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of cool we were using
Speaker 1: this app and the people who made the app jumped
Speaker 1: in and they were pretty interesting, and that encouraged even
Speaker 1: more people to check out Discord out of curiosity, and
Speaker 1: so what followed was a classic word of mouth campaign,
Speaker 1: and Discord started seeing more people sign up and download
Speaker 1: the app. And it wasn't like a huge avalanche of
Speaker 1: people at first, but it was an encouraging early start,
Speaker 1: and the trend was day over day growth with registered users.
Speaker 1: Those users began to say that being on Discord was
Speaker 1: sort of like being at a house party. Maybe you
Speaker 1: and a few friends grab a space on a couch
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know, a recent sporting event. Then
Speaker 1: after a bit, you excuse yourself and you decide to
Speaker 1: head over to the kitchen, and there you get into
Speaker 1: a conversation with some other people about how the DC
Speaker 1: Cinematic universe really went astray and became a complicated mess.
Speaker 1: And after a bit you then pop outside onto the
Speaker 1: back deck to talk with a different group of people
Speaker 1: about this amazing concert that one of them went to.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a house party, and a Discord
Speaker 1: server can have those separate spaces where all sorts of
Speaker 1: conversations can happen and you can hop from one to
Speaker 1: another just freely, as long as you have the permissions
Speaker 1: to join those channels. So rather than setting up a
Speaker 1: dedicated call between specific people, you have dedicated spaces. It was,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, a real game changer.
Speaker 1: People frequently will compare Discord with Slack communications and project
Speaker 1: management tool, and maybe that's one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: found Discord a little bit intimidating when I first popped on.
Speaker 1: It's not that Discord is particularly complicated or difficult to use,
Speaker 1: more than it represents yet another way of communicating with people,
Speaker 1: and I personally have hit fatigue on that. In fact,
Speaker 1: I hit fatigue probably a couple of years ago. At
Speaker 1: one point people were reaching out to me on Twitter, Facebook, Facebook, Messenger,
Speaker 1: Google Hangouts, base Camp, Slack, Discord, email and text, and
Speaker 1: probably a few that I've forgotten about, and y'all, that
Speaker 1: was just too much for me. But that's not the
Speaker 1: fault of any one of those platforms. It's just that,
Speaker 1: you know, I had notification overload. Because of its versatility,
Speaker 1: Discord didn't take long for people to adopt it, and
Speaker 1: for all sorts of community interests. I mentioned the tech
Speaker 1: Stuff server, which clearly isn't going to be dedicated to gaming. Instead,
Speaker 1: it will serve as a communal place for listeners to
Speaker 1: meet each other, talk about tech, maybe get into totally
Speaker 1: unrelated conversations, just you know, people connecting with other people. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that everything on Discord is all peaceful
Speaker 1: and happy. The platform, like dozens of other online platforms,
Speaker 1: has made the news as different extremist groups have made
Speaker 1: their own Discord servers. Discord has had to deal with
Speaker 1: things like hate groups, white supremacist groups, and other extremists
Speaker 1: who have made spaces on the service. The Discord team
Speaker 1: admitted that they responded too late to some of these groups,
Speaker 1: that we're creating a foothold in Discord. In seventeen, it
Speaker 1: became clear that far right protesters at Charlottesville had used
Speaker 1: Discord to plan the event. Prior to Charlottesville, discords general
Speaker 1: approach was to moderate and block the worst types of content,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like pornography or racial slurs. But as
Speaker 1: I think most people have learned over the last few years,
Speaker 1: the obvious stuff isn't where the problem starts and ends.
Speaker 1: The obvious stuff is just the most overt manifestation of
Speaker 1: deeper problems. But those underlying issues like racism, homophobia, misogyny,
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, those could be present and
Speaker 1: exacerbated without it being you know, obvious and on the surface.
Speaker 1: We've seen that across numerous online spaces, and Discord was
Speaker 1: one of them, and to some extent still is. After Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: the Discord team created a new department called Trust and Safety.
Speaker 1: The company now takes a more active role in defining
Speaker 1: the boundaries for online communities using Discord. Within those boundaries,
Speaker 1: server creators can make whatever type of community they like,
Speaker 1: but all of that has to be nested inside the
Speaker 1: more general rules for Discord as a whole. According to
Speaker 1: a website called Protocol, the Trust and Safety team makes
Speaker 1: up about fift of all of Discord's staff, which is
Speaker 1: a significant percentage and it really shows how big the
Speaker 1: challenges are when it comes to creating a safe space online.
Speaker 1: In dis Chord saw a major growth spurt, helped in
Speaker 1: large part by the fact that people were stuck at
Speaker 1: home during the COVID pandemic. From February to July of
Speaker 1: that year. The site's user numbers grew by nearly fift
Speaker 1: Schools were using it, some businesses were using it. Discord
Speaker 1: itself was looking different, with the team moving further away
Speaker 1: from the gaming culture that had spawned it. But one
Speaker 1: thing I haven't really mentioned in this episode is revenue.
Speaker 1: If Discord is a business, how does it make money.
Speaker 1: The co founders have already said that one thing they
Speaker 1: don't want to do is sell user data or to
Speaker 1: show ads to users. So the really big way the
Speaker 1: most online networking platforms rely upon to make money is
Speaker 1: off the table. So what is Discord doing instead? Well,
Speaker 1: right now, there are two main ways Discord makes money.
Speaker 1: One of them is the big one, and the other
Speaker 1: one is the small one. And the big one is
Speaker 1: through investments. Discord has received a lot of investments a
Speaker 1: million dollars or so. As I record this, analysts value
Speaker 1: the company at about three and a half billion dollars,
Speaker 1: But that valuation is based on discords utility and popularity,
Speaker 1: not on how much money it actually brings in. Because
Speaker 1: the second way, a much more modest means of revenue,
Speaker 1: is through a premium service called Nitro. Nitro is kind
Speaker 1: of like a V I P version of Discord, with
Speaker 1: some perks that the typical user doesn't have. They include
Speaker 1: the ability to change your user name, to access special emojis,
Speaker 1: and have better quality voice and video chat within the system.
Speaker 1: The subscription costs ten dollars per month. Now, I am
Speaker 1: not sure what percentage of active Discord users are Nitro subscribers,
Speaker 1: but my guess is that it's a fairly low percentage.
Speaker 1: I don't know that for a fact, it's just a
Speaker 1: guess now. In the past, Discord has also tried to
Speaker 1: get into the game's storefront business, something that's dominated by Valves,
Speaker 1: Steam storefront and the Epic Games storefront. This turned out
Speaker 1: to be a bust for Discord, and I imagine there
Speaker 1: are a couple of reasons why I didn't pan out.
Speaker 1: For one thing, Steam is a monolithic force in digital
Speaker 1: game delivery. It already has a really big user base,
Speaker 1: and just like real brick and mortar stores, customers tend
Speaker 1: to stick with whatever store they become used to. They've
Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff in that store already. And Secondly,
Speaker 1: discords user base wasn't just gamers. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of folks who never used Discord for gaming at all.
Speaker 1: We're relying on the app, so they really didn't have
Speaker 1: any interest in purchasing games through Discord. That's not why
Speaker 1: they used the service for After trying to market games
Speaker 1: for a few months, Discord pulled the plug on the experiment.
Speaker 1: It just it wasn't making Discord or their third party
Speaker 1: partners that were providing the games any real money, So
Speaker 1: it was more of a drain on reest Is than
Speaker 1: anything else. In more recent news, Discord became part of
Speaker 1: the brew haha surrounding the Wall Street Mets subreddit. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with that story, here's the shortest
Speaker 1: version I can manage. The subreddit is taking aim at
Speaker 1: hedge funds that specialize in something called the short cell. Now,
Speaker 1: this is when an investor borrows stock from a broker,
Speaker 1: So the investor doesn't own these stocks, but then the
Speaker 1: investor sells these borrowed stocks at whatever the market prices
Speaker 1: in the hopes that the price is going to soon drop.
Speaker 1: And if the price does drop, that's great news because
Speaker 1: then the investor buys back the borrowed shares and they
Speaker 1: are buying it back for less than what they sold
Speaker 1: them for, So they returned the borrowed shares to the
Speaker 1: broker and they pocket the difference. So if you have
Speaker 1: borrowed to share and you sell it for twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: and then you buy it back at ten dollars and
Speaker 1: you return the borrowed share, you get to keep that
Speaker 1: extra ten bucks. It's a way to money on a
Speaker 1: stock when the stock price drops. But there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different market forces, some of which are malicious,
Speaker 1: that can lead to stock prices dropping. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what the Wall Street Bets folks were objecting to. So
Speaker 1: here's the catch with this approach. If the stock price
Speaker 1: goes up instead of down, now you have to spend
Speaker 1: more money to buy back the borrowed stock to return
Speaker 1: it because you are obligated to return the shares that
Speaker 1: you borrowed. So if you sold shares for twenty dollars
Speaker 1: but the price goes up to twenty five dollars, you
Speaker 1: have to spend an extra five bucks of your own
Speaker 1: money to buy back the share you borrowed so that
Speaker 1: you can return it to the broker. Well, the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Bets sub breddit took aim at those big hedge
Speaker 1: funds that specialize in short selling, and the stock that
Speaker 1: got the most focused was for game Stop, the video
Speaker 1: game retail company just coincidentally happens to go back to
Speaker 1: video games. The Wall Street Bets for Oakes encouraged people
Speaker 1: to buy up shares of game Stop now buying up
Speaker 1: shares of a company tends to drive the stock price
Speaker 1: for that company up. It shows an increased demand. So
Speaker 1: you have these companies that are short selling, and people
Speaker 1: started buying these shares and the price started going up,
Speaker 1: not down. That puts the squeeze on groups that are
Speaker 1: trying to short sell the stock. So some of those
Speaker 1: folks will just cut their losses and they'll get out. Uh.
Speaker 1: But no one really likes to lose money, right, So
Speaker 1: a lot of people and a lot of these hedge
Speaker 1: funds would start to try and short sell even more shares.
Speaker 1: So they're borrowing even more shares and selling them at
Speaker 1: the market price, the idea being that, well, we already
Speaker 1: expected the price to go down. The price went up.
Speaker 1: Now I'm sure the price is going to come down,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do it some more, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: chase after that lost money. Kind of like if you're
Speaker 1: in Vegas and you're playing blackjack and you lose some money,
Speaker 1: so the next time you bet even more because you
Speaker 1: want to win back the money you lost plus make
Speaker 1: some and you're just getting into a sunk cost fallacy there.
Speaker 1: But since there were more active buyers because of the
Speaker 1: Wall Street bets folks, this price just kept going up
Speaker 1: and the squeeze was getting worse. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: go to the sub credit you might see people saying, hey,
Speaker 1: the squeeze hasn't even happened yet. What we're seeing is
Speaker 1: the early activity before the squeeze. Now, in reaction to
Speaker 1: all this, we saw several online platforms shut down to
Speaker 1: try and curb the behavior of the Wall Street Met's
Speaker 1: crowd um And this could be an entire episode, probably
Speaker 1: will be an entire episode in the future, but that
Speaker 1: included a discord server dedicated to the group. Now this
Speaker 1: story is still playing out as a record this and
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said on all sides of it,
Speaker 1: including pointing out the hypocrisy of how wealthy hedge funds
Speaker 1: have essentially played the same sort of games with the
Speaker 1: stock market for decades, and yet when it comes to
Speaker 1: groups of an individual investors who are organizing to do
Speaker 1: it online somehow, then it wrong. The whole thing is complicated,
Speaker 1: and like I said, I'll try and tackle an episode
Speaker 1: to talk more about in the future. It's a little
Speaker 1: tricky because really it's a subject matter that's better suited
Speaker 1: to a money oriented podcast. Anyway, Discord got some flak
Speaker 1: for banning the server, and they eventually reverse course on
Speaker 1: the decision. But it turns out that, at least according
Speaker 1: to Discord, this band was due to the server hosting
Speaker 1: quote hateful and discriminatory content end quote, which I'm guessing
Speaker 1: revolved around the general philosophy of eat the Rich. Also,
Speaker 1: the subreddit Wall Street Bets is filled with a lot
Speaker 1: of loaded language, which I'm guessing also triggers Discords moderation policies,
Speaker 1: essentially saying, hey, guys, don't use these types of words.
Speaker 1: It's harmful and it's not funny. Um where it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it's going like crazy on the subreddit. So the server
Speaker 1: is actually back. Now the Wall Street Bets discords er
Speaker 1: has returned, Discord is taking a more active role helping
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Bets team moderate content on that server
Speaker 1: to make sure it aligns with Discords policies, and as
Speaker 1: long as it does, then presumably it will still have
Speaker 1: a home over on Discord. I am sure that Discord
Speaker 1: is going to continue to play a big part in
Speaker 1: a lot of people's lives moving forward. I know that
Speaker 1: a lot of the gaming channels I follow Discord is
Speaker 1: playing a huge role because it tends to be the
Speaker 1: platform that creators are using in order to have conversations
Speaker 1: in the background that aren't going out over a stream,
Speaker 1: so that people can coordinate, get everything working together, work
Speaker 1: out a technical issues before they play together. So it's
Speaker 1: it's become a really useful tool for a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: and um one that I expect we'll see grow. And
Speaker 1: like I said, once that tech Stuff server is, you know,
Speaker 1: ready to at least be tested out, I'll let everybody
Speaker 1: know so people can join if they like. Chances are
Speaker 1: in the early days it will be pretty quiet, but
Speaker 1: I hope to actually foster a community that we're you know,
Speaker 1: my listeners can talk with one another. We really haven't
Speaker 1: had that in the past, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: a shame because I know that I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of super smart listeners who are experts in different fields,
Speaker 1: some of which overlap mind so in which I can't
Speaker 1: even begin to understand, and it would be really interesting
Speaker 1: to be able to have a place where that kind
Speaker 1: of conversation can happen. So that's my hope. I'll let
Speaker 1: you guys know when that thing is up and running
Speaker 1: and ready for folks to join and tear it to
Speaker 1: shreds because I know I'm not going to do a
Speaker 1: great job out of the gate, but that's okay. It'll
Speaker 1: be a work in progress in the meantime. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics I should cover on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, the best way to reach out to me
Speaker 1: really right now is on Twitter. To handle for the
Speaker 1: show is text stuff H s W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.