Discord Soon Introducing Forums

[Tucker933]

This is a big yikes for most of us. Thoughts?

Discord is testing forums, new mod tools and homepages that surface hot topics in some servers | TechCrunch

Discord will start testing a handful of new features in some of its biggest communities this week. The social audio and chat platform got its start

techcrunch.com

 

[Fait]

This will fade out quickly imo, You still can't customize it's design and own the data which many people leave social media to a smaller site like forums.

 

[Page]

Most people even myself that have discord servers are not going to bother with this new option. Xd Most people rather go into the voice room and talk rather then posting.

 

[Katrina]

At first I thought it would be similar to Tapatalk but then saw that it actually is a better version of organizing their chats. I mean, that's better than Facebook Groups! I think that it could really take off for those who enjoy Discord.

 

[Page]

At first I thought it would be similar to Tapatalk but then saw that it actually is a better version of organizing their chats. I mean, that's better than Facebook Groups! I think that it could really take off for those who enjoy Discord.

Goodbye Websites/fourms 🙁

 

[Tucker933]

This will fade out quickly imo, You still can't customize it's design and own the data which many people leave social media to a smaller site like forums.

Eh, doesn't seem like it would fade. The biggest contributor to the decline of forum popularity in the past 5 years, at least in the gaming and tech niches, has been due to Discord as it already is.

After this, the last significant advantage I see for traditional forums is searchability, as Discord content isn't yet broadly searchable. However I imagine it's only a matter of time before that changes, considering their focus on forum-like discussion.

 

[Fait]

Eh, doesn't seem like it would fade. The biggest contributor to the decline of forum popularity in the past 5 years, at least in the gaming and tech niches, has been due to Discord as it already is.

After this, the last significant advantage I see for traditional forums is searchability, as Discord content isn't yet broadly searchable. However I imagine it's only a matter of time before that changes, considering their focus on forum-like discussion.

It’s a little worrying..
that’s why I’m adding a blog to my forum because a forum alone these days doesn’t help much 🙁

I read up that this feature is only for game developers at this stage.

 

[Tucker933]

I read up that this feature is only for game developers at this stage.

At the time of the article maybe, but I received a pop-up the other day in Discord asking if I wanted to try it out on my server.

 

[Fait]

At the time of the article maybe, but I received a pop-up the other day in Discord asking if I wanted to try it out on my server.

There is one advantage Xenforo has over discord forums so far, the post view is so much neater, Discord is just using their normal chat log when you click on a thread which isn’t good SEO wise.

We see where this goes but I’m hoping it won’t ruin website forums, I’m adding a blog to my site soon too to make up for things.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I think forums that have already gone to Discord might have an interest in this but I don't think forums will migrate to Discord just because they are now offering what looks to be a very basic forum.

 

[fantanoice]

Honestly good customer feature. I know for me big Discords can be unwieldy because a lot of conversation happens at once so it's hard to get a word in. Also I live in Australia so a lot of conversation happens when I'm asleep so I miss important stuff. I hate feeling like I'm digging up a corpse when I reply to something that was said at 3.30am for me 😂

 

[Nomad]

I am on discord but I do not know how to make use of it for building members on my forums or promoting my content.

 

[Moonface]

This will fade out quickly imo, You still can't customize it's design and own the data which many people leave social media to a smaller site like forums.

Customization only really matters to the forum owners mostly. Most big platforms of communication such as Discord, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, etc. offer little to no customization but people flock there because those platforms are tailored to what they want out of them, which isn't robust design customization. Owning data is also not something any regular user cares for, because if they did then every popular platform wouldn't be a place that doesn't let you take the data with you. People leave social media because it's a toxic dump that has zero positive impacts on mental health and people get tired of it, but I doubt many who leave that are under the age of 25 seek out a forum unless it's somewhere stupidly big like ResetEra which may as well be its own platform.

Design customization also relies on an owner who cares to do the effort of that nowadays too. Why spend the time and money to get a forum theme put together when you can just go to Discord and fully set up a server in less than an hour? Especially when it's likely that if you already use Discord, anyone else you know also uses it, and so why try and move all those people to some other platform instead of just getting together in a server on the platform you're already on? I feel like unless a forum is based on a subject that can not be found commonly anywhere else or actually benefits from the organization and cataloguing of a forum, that most are likely destined to keep a core group of people while the rest are either paid to be there or show up once in a blue moon.

Cynical? Probably, but I've just not really seen a reason in a while now to see why people think forums can thrive if the introduction of something like it on Discord is expected to fail. If the crowd on Discord doesn't care for this forum feature, why on earth would they care for an actual forum? If they did care, it just means there's also no reason to go to an actual forum because to them Discord is providing that already and unless there's no server on there based on a subject you want to talk about no forum is going to be enticing unless it's on such a scale that it doesn't even need to care about promoting itself on a place such as this.

 

[Page]

When are they going to do it then?

 

[Moonface]

When are they going to do it then?

It seems to be on Partnered Servers right now, and looks like this apparently:

Looks like some weird embedded version of a Reddit post to me depending on where these things actually live in the servers.