Why Discord messenger is interesting for users and investors
Microsoft Corporation announced its intention to buy the Discord messenger, now the parties are negotiating. The estimated amount of the deal is 10 billion dollars. The communication platform was developed for gamers by the San Francisco-based company. The messenger is compatible with various operating systems, there is a desktop application and a variant for mobile devices.
It should be noted that Discord for some time is actively looking for a buyer for its product, the known negotiations of the management with Epic Games and Amazon, but the cooperation has not progressed beyond the talks. There are also rumors that the developer is planning to list the shares on the stock exchange, but there is no confirmation of this information.
Discord messenger appeared as a tool for gamers, which could transmit messages, audio and video content. But everything changed during the pandemic of 2020, when people didn’t have enough live communication and began to replace it with virtual. Then Discord became a great alternative to other platforms, and it was appreciated not only by fans of computer games, but also by students and workers.
For Microsoft this is not the first purchase of the messenger. In 2011, the internet giant bought Skype for $8.5 billion, which was virtually the only such service for video communication. However, this acquisition did not help Skype, the service was gradually losing users, and in 2020 it became obvious that its era was over.
As for Discord, when the popularity of the messenger went beyond the gamer community, its developers decided to redesign and reformat the service for a wider audience. It paid off, and the number of users began to grow rapidly. Just in half a year their number grew by more than 50%. The number of active users is 100 million people a month or more than 30% of the audience of Twitter or Snapchat. Experts estimate the company at $3.5 billion.
The creator of the messenger is Jason Citrin of Hammer & Chisel. Initially it was engaged in the development and support of MOBA games, but in 2015 it decided to refocus on Discord. The service quickly became popular with audiences of the Twitch.tv and Star Citizen platforms. In 2017, it became possible to video chat in the messenger, the maximum number of people was 10 users, and in 2020 it grew to 50.
The service is free, but there is also a paid subscription, which adds a number of features, including improved image quality, transfer large files, run a demonstration screen for other users. The developers are expanding the capabilities of the messenger, making it convenient for communicating with different categories of people.
