Demand for Discord Slides a Whopping 37% Since 2021
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Demand for Discord, much like demand for most digital ways to communicate, grew sharply in 2020 and continued steadily into the pandemic.
For Discord, that meant downloads rising from roughly 6M downloads in January to 20M in October, according to our estimates. That was the peak for downloads for Discord, which refused to take $10B from Microsoft so it can go it alone.
That peak however was the end of growth for Discord...
After hitting peak in 2020, downloads started sloping down every month. November dropped to 13M, and by March of 2022, downloads we at half - 10M, according to our estimates. By the end of 2022 downloads dropped to 8.7M, and as of April of 2023, are down to 7.2M, almost where they started.
Considering Discord is a gamer tool that's more likely to run on a desktop than a mobile device, this does make some sense. But the real question is, does Discord really need to be a gamer app?
Tools like AI art generator Midjourney are exclusively running on Discord and don't have any other interface. That plus the amazing amount of moderation tools Discord has built-in, and that it's free to use for communities unlike Slack, should make it into a more mainstream tool.
At least that's what I hope to see.
If you ask me, its main challenge to getting there is its dark theme and confusing UI. Fix that and goodbye Slack for communities.
Question: Are you more or less likely to join a non-gamer community, say for app marketing, if it's on Discord? Asking for a friend.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
