Maybe, but at least in my circles it’s a structure thing- until the group actually can be organised in a single chat sanely something else will be used- but as soon as multiple chats are required the thing is moved on discord.

might be a regional thing instead, i don't know many americans with whatsapp -- all of my friends are on discord.

Discord's initial core demographic was online gaming. From there it has radiated outwards due to being the best group messaging (and voice chat) solution out there. The more overlap your friend group has with gaming and adjacent groups the more likely they are to use Discord

When Bloomberg’s podcasts have a Discord channel (eg: Odd Lots), you know it has broken free of its gaming origins.

Yes. Whatsapp requires a phone number and Discord does not. The tweens who do not have a phone yet can join Discord with their siblings / friends.

The other part of this is that Discord has official University hubs, so the college kids are all in there. You need an email address from that Univeristy to join: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406046651927-...

Are you using the word tweens in some sense other than its usual definition of pre-teen? My understanding is that discord, like most online services, requires registered users to be 13 years old.

Nope, that's exactly what I meant. That requirement just means that they have to check a box which says that they're 13 or older. Surely no child would ever break the rules, right?

Having been out of university since before Discord was much of a thing, that's news to me. It also is eerily reminiscent of Facebook's beginning sign up requirements.

I guess that depends on the University and whether or not you get to keep your email address after you graduate. From what I understand from my college-aged kids, most people get kicked out of the hub after they graduate.

It's similar in Apple's strategy of trying to get Macintosh into the classrooms (in the 80s/90s), and student discounts on Adobe products.

I am not a huge fan of Discord, although I do use it. It's very good at what it does, and the communities it houses are well moderated, at least the ones that I have joined. I dislike that they've taken over communities and walled them off from the "searchable" internet.

That is actually something I quite like about Discord. Whatever I write and post, while not "private" is not indexed or searchable by anyone other tgan those people that have been vetted (invited) by the respective community. Not that I'm mostly on small friendgroup Discords with 10 - 100 members.

Right, and they're blending two things together -- group chats and public forums. I'm sad about losing the public forums.

I want my community to have:

- bots (like we had on IRC) - first class clients on all platforms (mobile, tablet, desktop, browser) - voice chat - video chat

Telegram and Discord are the only ones that satisfy all these.

And of these Telegram is just one channel, on Discord we can separate subjects by channels in seconds. If I see a message on #general, I go check what it is. On #memes I know it's not urgent.

Matrix if you want to play IT support on your free time.

Definitely. My friend group consists of gen-z and millenials and we met irl but have a shared interest of gaming that gets us together on weekends.

What Discord does so well is that you start using it for gaming but then it also becomes the space for all kinds of things. We discuss news there, music/popculture, organize events etc

Whatsapp is more for the "formal" stuff and when it's time critical since not everybody has Discord notifications enabled.

I'd say Discord is definitely more popular among gen-z (or even younger) and gamers but it's kinda become reddit 2.0 where every niche has its discord.