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Chatroom?


Chessrook44

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So, pretty simple question here, admittedly... do you think you guys might be interested if I started up a Discord chatroom?  The community may not be the BIGGEST, and it may be forum-focused, but hey, it could be another way for people to socialize and so forth.  I've been considering it, and wanted to see if people would go for it.

 

EDIT: Okay, so people have expressed interest in it.  If you wish to join, simply click on the following link: https://discord.gg/hEQHj3w

 

Discord functions as a voice chat, text chat, messenger and chatroom program, and will work in-browser, on a downloadable client, and on mobile.  Pop in and check it out!  It's somewhat basic at the moment, but I may develop it in time if more channels or the like are needed.

Edited by Chessrook44
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Free services that the service provider is mining in some way are still free.

 

I think there is room for a second chat option.  All personal feelings aside, sy's sw-ish chatroom is not something that can be offered to the whole, broad, "family friendly" Spiderweb audience, simply due to language/topic norms.  I don't think those norms are a bad thing, btw, I just think there is room for a more universal option.

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I did actually look at Wikipedia and their site to see if there's any info on how they make their money, and all it says is that they raised 30 million from investors.  In my experience on it, I have never seen ANY advertisements or the like.  So I honestly can't say how they make money, if at all.

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It looks like Discord, in proud tech startup tradition, for a long time didn't make any revenue at all but ran on investor money with eventual plans to add monetization. They do have a $5/mo premium service now and probably are gonna start selling emoji packs or skins or something similar pretty soon. But hey, Twitter and Youtube have never ever been profitable, so maybe it'll just stay how it is.

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3 hours ago, sylae said:

businesses don't offer free services because they feel like being nice, they offer free services because the user is the product.

 

Businesses offer free services because they're still making money from them somehow. Sometimes it's by directly making money from the use of the service. Sometimes the revenue is advertising; sure, that only works by customers spending money, but it's not like they lose anything. And sometimes the service is essentially a loss-leader: it's good enough that users will donate, subscribe, or buy the add-ons to the free version and make money.

 

—Alorael, who has no idea what model Discord uses. So he did some looking, and it seems to be trying to go freemium. Despite the sneer that goes along with the term after countless awful free to play games, freemium is a perfectly good and benign model.

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Freemium can be obnoxious, and it can make for a miserable pay-to-win competitive environment, but the core idea is that you pay for more of the product. Compared to selling your data, or spyware, I think it has much lower potential for unavoidable and secret evil.

 

—Alorael, who can see the argument that the users/players who get sucked in and dump more money than they really can afford into freemium are victims. But they're victims who also made a choice. And as partly self-inflicted evil goes, freemium rates far below plenty of other things that have made headlines.

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Forgive me for being dense/out of touch, but what is the point of this Discord chatroom? (And I mean that as a question question, not as a rhetorical question; I'm not saying it has no point, I'm asking what the point is.) That is, under what circumstances might a person want to use it, and for what?

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1 hour ago, Voice Powered Vehicle said:

Freemium can be obnoxious, and it can make for a miserable pay-to-win competitive environment, but the core idea is that you pay for more of the product. Compared to selling your data, or spyware, I think it has much lower potential for unavoidable and secret evil.

 

I don't mean to derail the thread, but think there are some important distinctions here between

 

1) "pay once for more of the product" -- which is the core idea of shareware, or of demos, expansions, and DLC

2) "pay continuously for more functionality" -- which is the freemium model being discussed

3) "pay an unlimited amount for a competitive advantage" -- which is also freemium, I guess, but is more specifically free-to-play or pay-to-win

 

While Discord's model is technically category B and technically a "premium", it is clearly designed to be unnecessary and not something anyone gets pushed into.  You're paying for a few very specific, mostly visual features, like having an animated avatar.

 

Also, and unrelated to Discord: just because you're paying for a service doesn't mean your data isn't being sold.

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1 hour ago, Kelandon said:

Forgive me for being dense/out of touch, but what is the point of this Discord chatroom? (And I mean that as a question question, not as a rhetorical question; I'm not saying it has no point, I'm asking what the point is.) That is, under what circumstances might a person want to use it, and for what?

....another socialization option, I suppose?  I always considered chatrooms in general to be a more casual way to chat or talk than forums, seeing as forums have long posts with long delays between getting a response (usually) while chatrooms are more immediate.  It's like the difference between exchanging letters and talking on a phone.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I enjoyed the one AIM chat I participated in, and visit CalRef primarily for that feature. I would likely pop into another chat system, particularly if there were specifically scheduled times to get folks together. There aren't many systems I'd rule out, but IRC would be my top choice.

Edited by Actaeon
Can't seem to make a custom font work
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  • 3 months later...
2 hours ago, jessicawhite999 said:

I think I wont join something like that because I am quite reserved. How about other people?

 

Well, as someone with a moderate(/severe) social anxiety, I find text-chats to be rather easy to get into, very much more so than voice-comm chats. You don't need to say anything if you don't want to, and it's easy to just press the red X if you start to feel uncomfortable.

 

Besides, from what I've stalked the forums, Spiderweb seems to have a really friendly community so I'd wager the same kind of atmosphere would continue in the chat-room, too. What's there to lose, except one's own sanity. But then again, ain't that something we have all left on the door on our way in anyway, as is customary for Spiderweb's forums. :p

 

EDIT: Is the Discord chat still a thing? Seems like the invite code has expired.

Edited by Zaego
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If you'd like to join a chat that's active with mostly Spiderweb Software members, Global Moderator Sylae's satellite site, 'Calamity Refuge' is a niche that holds a lot of the regulars. The chat there has quite a few people constantly. We sure wouldn't mind new faces over there. https://calref.net/

We discuss Jeff's games, cats, terrible bosses, music and a wide variety of stuff from time to time :)

Edited by Trenton.
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