Discord, a social network for gamers, crosses 250 million users
Discord, an SF-based social network for gamers celebrated its fourth year anniversary with an announcement that it has over 250 million users. Photo: Discord.
San Jose, Calif. (KTVU) - Discord, the San Francisco-based chat app that serves as a social network for gamers announced Monday that it had crossed 250 million users across its web and mobile platform. That’s an impressive feat for a four-year-old app, which nearly doubled its user base from 130 million in May 2018, making it as wildly popular as Fortnite, the free to play video game from Epic Games.
The service boasts over 56 million monthly active users, who send 850 million messages per day, and 25 billion messages every month. Discord now has over 165 employees, up over 50 percent in one year. “As Discord has grown, it’s gone mainstream, providing everyone a way to chat about all passion points including sports, tabletop games, music, pets, and news,” Discord said in a statement.
The app also offers a storefront for digital games, offering developers a 90/10 revenue split, where Discord takes 10 percent of the sale. It also offers a Netflix-style library of games for $9.99 a month called Discord Nitro, which includes enhanced chat features such as 1080p 30fps screen shares, special profile badges, custom emojis, gifs as animated avatars and emojis, and higher quality video. A $4.99 classic pack offers enhanced chat features without the games offered in the Nitro pack.
Discord offers game publishers and developers to run servers with a verified checkmark. According to the company, the top seven most popular verified servers include Fortnite, SpellBreak, PUBG Mobile, Clash Royale, Minecraft, ZombsRoyale, and Rainbow 6.
Discord's competitors include Twitch, Mumble, TeamSpeak, and Skype. The SF-based company has raised over $279 million in seven rounds of funding so far, according to Crunchbase, a startup tracker. It was valued at over $2B in its last round.