With the establishment of lockdown in France at the end of March 2020, communication applications, which allow you to keep in touch with a loved one or a colleague, saw their number of downloads explode. Among the classics Skype or Microsoft Teams, one application stands out, whose number of registrations increased by 4 after a week of lockdown and ended up reaching 140 million users in December 2020: it is Discord.Created in 2015, Discord is a chat application, or Cat In English, designed and designed primarily for an audience of video game players. In particular, it allows players to discuss orally during a game session. While it quickly established itself as an essential tool for online gaming in the gaming ecosystem, Discord has evolved into a complete social network, where it is possible to bring together a community, communicate orally and in writing, and is now aimed at a much larger audience, until it has now become a popular tool for brands.
I. How does Discord work?
1. The server
First of all, the Discord tool consists of chat servers, public or private. A Discord user can choose to create a private communication server, and invite other users. To do so, he can either choose to invite them personally, or generate an invitation link that he can publish everywhere, and which will give access to the server. Indeed, apart from these two invitation methods, it is impossible to find a private server through a search for keywords in a search bar. Users can also search for a public Discord server, in a more traditional way, according to its affinities and interests. Server themes are varied today: video games, music, music, cinema, pop culture, personalities, etc.
2. Communication channels
Discord allows two types of communication: oral and written. Text chat rooms use the communication codes of chat rooms from the 2000s, such as IRC. Discord offers a set of options for organizing discussions within a server: once the server is created, the Discord user can create discussion sub-sections, the “channels” or channels, in order to organize the conversations thematically. For example, in a Discord server created around music, the creator can then subdivide this space with a section on the latest American Pop releases, a section on French variety, another only around the electro/pop genre, and finally a last one on little-known hip hop gems. Each user present on the Discord server is then free to choose which discussion channels to consult and interact with, according to their affinities. Users on the same server can also take advantage of voice rooms, which can be organized in the same way as text rooms in order to allow members to meet around a subject or a common passion.Finally, Discord has also implemented a new audio space format: the Stage Channel. In the same way as a Clubhouse or a Twitter Space, Stage Channel allows you to broadcast live audio conversations, with a room of virtual listeners. This feature allows creators in particular to address their community, in the format of a digital conference.finally, in the format of a digital conference.finally, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, share resources, in the digital conference.finally, in the format of a digital conference.finally, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news Very useful to A community, united around a common passion, which can use these functionalities to communicate Around an event, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, news, share, share, share, share resources, debate and discussion.For the community of video game players, the Discord application allows you to meet up, discuss news about the game, discuss news about the game, discuss news about the game, and above all to play together while being able communicate with each other during the game. Discord goes even further, and also allows you to share a game session, or “live streaming”, with other members.
3. The roles
Once the Discord server is full of new members, it is possible for the creator and owner of the server to create, customize, and assign roles for the various members that make up the server. This makes it easy to recognize the various teams and important people on a server for other members, such as an administrator or manager. For example, in the context of a Discord server around a project financed through the crowdfunding model, this makes it possible to highlight the team behind the project, the team of moderators, and to classify the members of the Discord server according to the levels of financial commitments.
A role is also a finer method of targeted communication:
- The Project Team is now able to mention and address only a role, and therefore only the members assigned to this specific role.
- A text or voice chat can only be reserved for a specific role.
4. Customize your server
Another of the strengths of Discord is the possibility of integrating robots, or “bots”, into a server, which can include various functionalities, and whose main objective is to automate tasks on the server. These bots can take care of a simple automatic welcome message and moderations, and even bring new content such as a music player, games, polls, events, etc. These bots allow server members to be more engaged, and are practical tools for community animation. To continue to improve this community experience on the server, there are also some cosmetic features. Each server can have emojis and stickers that are unique to them, and are often designed in the image of the project.
II. The Discord subscription
1. Discord Nitro
The Discord Nitro subscription is the paid “premium” version of the tool, which grants additional advantages and functionalities of the tool. Improving the quality of the video on a screen share, increasing the maximum size of files uploaded to the server, customizing your Discord profile, increasing the maximum number of servers that can be joined, the Nitro subscription significantly enhances the Discord user experience.
2. Nitro Boosting
A Boost is a subscription applied to a given Discord server, to provide said server with additional features. Each server member can participate in server boosting by buying a boost and applying it to the server.Boosting a server allows you to reach different levels of boosts, which include a series of new features:
The user who boosts a server will then be given a badge and an exclusive status, visible to all other members of the server.
III. Discord, a community tool
1. The Preferred Means of Communication for Gamers
In 2022, 14 of the 20 largest Discord servers, that is to say, with the largest number of members, are servers focused on video games. The biggest server to date is dedicated to the phenomenon game Genshin Impact, with 946k members.
As its logo suggests, Discord is a platform originally created to support players in their community video game experiences. Many features are included in Discord for this purpose: players can join servers dedicated to their favorite games to chat, find out what's new, find essential information and resources, ask for or provide help, and watch other players share their current games. Players can even link their Discord account to different video game platforms to share their gaming activities in real time.
Finally, and above all, during a game session with other members of the server, the Discord application offers an overlay, so you can continue to communicate with your game partners.
2. Homeschooling on Discord
Between the possibility of sharing resources and documents, the help spaces, and the voice rooms with the option of screen sharing, the great variety and complementarity of Discord functionalities end up attracting a completely different environment: the school.
Faced with the challenges of staying in contact with their students, teachers then massively choose to use Discord to teach at home, during the lockdown period. The popularity of the application for this purpose is such that Discord ended up publishing a Guide for Teachers, in order to learn and optimize their use of the application, and decided to increase the capacity of voice rooms from 12 to 50 people maximum with the “Go Live” screen sharing option.
3. The Communication Opportunity for Brands
With the growing popularity of Web3.0 and the metaverse, many brands are taking the plunge and communicating about their project using mainly two social networks:
- Twitter for general public communication on the project itself, announcements, news
- Discord to bring the community together in the same space, to be able to continuously feed them with information and resources and to animate exchanges.
This is the case, for example, with Carrefour and its Web3.0 NFBees project. Carrefour uses Discord to bring together those who buy one of their NFTs, or simply who are interested in the project, and communicate about the progress of the project and the various upcoming events.
In the same genre, Adidas is launching and selling a collection of 30K NFTs, through Adidas Originals, and created a Discord server to bring together fans and buyers. Adidas then transforms the platform into a marketplace, provides interested parties with information and news about the project and thus prepares Adidas for the big leap into the metaverse.
What audiences for Discord in 2022?
- 140 million monthly active unique users
- 20 million daily active unique users
- 19 million unique servers active monthly
- 70% of users use Discord to play
- The United States represents 28% of Discord traffic, France is the 5E Countries, with 3.4% of traffic
- 20 is the average age of users
What are the future interests of an advertiser on Discord?
- Reaching a Key Target: 16-34 Year Olds
- Bringing together, animating and engaging a community around the same focus of interest, a common passion in the same space.
- Gain proximity with consumers through a direct discussion medium
- Centralize community communication in the same space, to provide members with information, news, announcements and resources of all types.
- Use an instant messaging system for customer relationships 2.0
CONCLUSION
With the evolution of Discord's gaming positioning which is tending towards a more universal use, the growing popularity of the application is still far from having reached its peak. Discord seems like a Swiss Army knife for community activation, through all of these functionalities, and is a key platform for a brand that wants to bring together, communicate and engage a group with a common passion. With the concrete case of Web3 projects for brands, Discord is becoming an essential tool within a brand's communication strategy.
