Discord exploring sale worth more than $10 Billion

[Eolirin]

Not been following this because in my nieve mind it was crazy, $10B for a chat forum and voice chat which they already have.

Did understand it would be nice to get the social graph aspect, but still.

Guess then the chat etc will be powered by Xbox network.

If they really want to keep xbox live gold, maybe they could put discord in it since it will have even less reason to exist soon, and it gets sold to non xbox gamers also. May need to roll gold into discord branding than the other way around for now though.
As the trouble with these types of products, before you know it everyone is using something different if your not careful, and you probably don't want to give PS gamers any reason to switch.

Only been 2 pages, guess I'll go read them to understand it all.
My guess is the social network graph is a big chunk of what makes it worth so much though.

I think there's some useful underlying technologies that can be used to create a lower weight Teams experience targeting smaller businesses too. And it's being used that way by a number of companies as well. Discord was investigating expanding enterprise offerings, I believe. So this also lets them absorb a potential competitor to Teams, and one that, thanks to it's voice and video integration is a more viable competitor long term than Slack.

That plus having a well liked and well featured cross platform social platform that can replace Xbox's social features in all of the places where Game Pass exists is a benefit to their attempts to unify those platforms.

MS is also well positioned to deal with the weaknesses of Discord which are mostly infrastructure and business model related.

So it hits a lot of notes for them.

 

[Jay]

I think there's some useful underlying technologies that can be used to create a lower weight Teams experience targeting smaller businesses too.

Thanks
There's already free teams, for example family and friends, so can already scale down.
But your points are taken.
I know MS has been trying to get a lot of social platforms on board for the graphs.

Didn't know about the tech behind discord, sounds like may be lot more to it than I thought.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

Not been following this because in my nieve mind it was crazy, $10B for a chat forum and voice chat which they already have.

It is mostly the price for the community itself.

 

[Eolirin]

Thanks
There's already free teams, for example family and friends, so can already scale down.
But your points are taken.
I know MS has been trying to get a lot of social platforms on board for the graphs.

Didn't know about the tech behind discord, sounds like may be lot more to it than I thought.

Free Teams is not as good as Discord for light weight use cases. Discord is grossly inadequate for more complex work loads, so Teams has it beat for larger scale enterprise use, but for users that don't need complex integration with other tools or document management it covers the basic use scenarios better. Including a pretty solid bot framework.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Its amazing how an electron app can be worth so much.

It's not so much the app as the community they want.

 

[BRiT]

It's not so much the app as the community they want.

I agree, but it's still just an electron app fronting the entire thing. There's some "Discord competitors" but they don't have the community even if they have some expanded functionality. It's all about getting big and remaining big.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I hope for Discord User's sake that MS have learned their lesson. They basically ruined Skype with their attempt to simply and "mobile"-ize it, it's not nearly as good or robust as it was when they first acquired it. It wasn't so bad at first when their "mobile"-ized version was developed in parallel with the Win32 desktop version (which had more features AND was more stable and reliable). But then they replaced the Win32 desktop version with the crappy "mobile" version of Skype and it just kind of sucks now, even if it still does some things way better than something like Apple's iMessage (now there's a REALLY crappy text messaging app if I've ever seen one).

Hell, I'm still salty that they replaced MSN/Live messenger with it. MSN/Live messenger was significantly better than Skype when it came to text messaging.

Anyway, if MS does acquire Discord, hopefully they'll allow them to continue to develop the current versions independently or in parallel with whatever their plans are for the Discord technology.

Regards,
SB

 

[BRiT]

Skype ruined itself.

 

[Eolirin]

I hope for Discord User's sake that MS have learned their lesson. They basically ruined Skype with their attempt to simply and "mobile"-ize it, it's not nearly as good or robust as it was when they first acquired it. It wasn't so bad at first when their "mobile"-ized version was developed in parallel with the Win32 desktop version (which had more features AND was more stable and reliable). But then they replaced the Win32 desktop version with the crappy "mobile" version of Skype and it just kind of sucks now, even if it still does some things way better than something like Apple's iMessage (now there's a REALLY crappy text messaging app if I've ever seen one).

Hell, I'm still salty that they replaced MSN/Live messenger with it. MSN/Live messenger was significantly better than Skype when it came to text messaging.

Anyway, if MS does acquire Discord, hopefully they'll allow them to continue to develop the current versions independently or in parallel with whatever their plans are for the Discord technology.

Regards,
SB

At the point where they did that massive re-engineering Skype had already fallen so far behind its competitors that it was basically not relevant to the market. They probably lost more users trying to catch up than they would have if they had just continued down the path they were already on, but they were already facing a slow death spiral.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

At the point where they did that massive re-engineering Skype had already fallen so far behind its competitors that it was basically not relevant to the market. They probably lost more users trying to catch up than they would have if they had just continued down the path they were already on, but they were already facing a slow death spiral.

I think their main problem is that the did not pivot to accounts based on mobile numbers rather than the regular ones. Should have added the support of that and Skype would have much bigger market share.

 

[liams]

I think their main problem is that the did not pivot to accounts based on mobile numbers rather than the regular ones. Should have added the support of that and Skype would have much bigger market share.

it really is amazing how many of microsofts problems for the last 10-15 years really boil down to missing mobile, really makes me wonder if it was the right move to divest from Nokia, regardless of market share

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

it really is amazing how many of microsofts problems for the last 10-15 years really boil down to missing mobile, really makes me wonder if it was the right move to divest from Nokia, regardless of market share

I think it was the case of missing the next big thing basically. At least they did not miss cloud and service based economy.
I don't think having Nokia would help that much. In fact - if we look at the market - aside Android and Apple no other OSs have any chances and even within Android aside Google and Samsung no one else comes close (Huawei arguably but in their case they have the full government support and huge local market).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think it was the case of missing the next big thing basically. At least they did not miss cloud and service based economy.
I don't think having Nokia would help that much. In fact - if we look at the market - aside Android and Apple no other OSs have any chances and even within Android aside Google and Samsung no one else comes close (Huawei arguably but in their case they have the full government support and huge local market).

They didn't necessarily miss on the next big thing, they failed to capitalize when they had the chance.

The brought tablets to the mass market long before Apple or Android, but it was too soon and they stagnated on it too quickly.

They had a large share of the mobile market for years with a platform that easily could have evolved into the modern smartphone, but again, they didn't capitalize on it and investment in that area was a pittance right when Apple and Android entered the market. That said, they weren't the only ones that got complacent in the mobile arena, so it's hard to completely hold that against them.

Microsoft's largest problem hasn't exactly been missing out on things, but their ability (or inability) to market it in such a way as to make people want to use it. That was always Apple's brilliance, their ability to market things and make people feel like they need it is almost second to none. Good MP3 players existed for quite a while before Apple got into that market, but they were the first to market it in such a way as to make the general public feel like they NEEDED one. Of course, it helps that they don't generally put out crap products anymore.

Microsoft? They were a marketing punching bag with too much focused on Technical things and not enough focus on Hip trendy things. They've gotten better at that in the past few years, but they still aren't on Apple's level when it comes to marketing their products.

I still cringe thinking about Microsoft's attempt at a cool/trendy advertising push with those commercials that had Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in it.

Regards,
SB

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

They had a large share of the mobile market for years with a platform that easily could have evolved into the modern smartphone, but again, they didn't capitalize on it and investment in that area was a pittance right when Apple and Android entered the market. That said, they weren't the only ones that got complacent in the mobile arena, so it's hard to completely hold that against them.

I think the case with mobile market is that they did not introduce touch phones and multi touch that also killed Symbian. In case of Windows they positioned their phones as business phones and did not aim at consumer market all.

Microsoft's largest problem hasn't exactly been missing out on things, but their ability (or inability) to market it in such a way as to make people want to use it. That was always Apple's brilliance, their ability to market things and make people feel like they need it is almost second to none. Good MP3 players existed for quite a while before Apple got into that market, but they were the first to market it in such a way as to make the general public feel like they NEEDED one. Of course, it helps that they don't generally put out crap products anymore

That is true. Even with Xbox such issues still exist. They just cannot build the hype - at least for now it is changing with their marketing push. Probably there were too long in business market so they just don't know how to attract the regular consumer.

 

[BRiT]

Discord called off discussions with everyone, returns focus on potential IPO. Microsoft's bid was $12 Billion.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/discord-ends-deal-talks-with-microsoft-11618938806?mod=e2tw

https://twitter.com/x/status/1384580913636405250

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

Ads fest, here it comes.

Still, sad that the deal fell through. MS needs some kinda of consumer service as it falls behind Amazon, Google and Facebook in that regard.

 

[BRiT]

I can see Discord ending up like Yahoo, eventually being sold for cents on the dollar to someone else and then after than being sold for half the price it once had. Microsoft made a bid of $50 Billion for just Yahoo at one point. Now it's being mostly resold for a fraction of $5 billion (bundled with AOL).

From this latest news blurb @ https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/3/22416854/aol-yahoo-sale-apollo-venetian-hotel-verizon

Verizon sells AOL and Yahoo for about half of what it paid
Purchased by the owner of the Venetian casino in Las Vegas

Verizon has sold its AOL and Yahoo properties to Apollo Global Management in a deal said to be worth $5 billion, about half of the nearly $9 billion Verizon originally paid for the pair. Verizon will maintain a 10 percent stake in the company, now known as Yahoo and led by CEO Guru Gowrappan. The deal, which includes Verizon’s ad tech business, was heavily rumored over the last week and is still subject to closing conditions. Once complete, it’ll bring an end to Verizon’s troubled experiment with media production and advertising.

 

[eastmen]

Sony announced a discord partnership and a minority stake

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389267179095293955

 

[BRiT]

Indicates target of 2022.

 

[liams]

interestingly this has been in the works for a little while now, on the sony blog they said that sony invested into discords series H round. This round of investment occurred in december 2020 at a $7B valuation

Some info on the funding round more generally
Discord bags $100M funding in Series H round at $7B valuation (techstory.in)

Obviously this is a very minor stake all things considered, even if sony had been the sole investor in the funding round, which they weren't, they would have a ~1.4% stake.

I wonder if this makes microsoft up their offer of (according to reports) $12B