How We’re Making Discord More Welcoming for Everyone
By: Jason Citron
Tags: Company

When Stan and I started this crazy ride in 2015, we wanted to create a better way to talk and hang out online while playing video games with friends. As Discord has grown over the years, it’s been humbling to see how many people have made Discord their place to talk and hang out.

All the amazing — and even strange — ways you’ve been using our service inspires us every day. With over nineteen million active servers of all sizes, Discord has become a place for study groups, karaoke nights, plant parenting advice, learning about cryptocurrencies, and simply a place to talk and hang out with your people whoever they are.

Today, as we celebrate our sixth birthday, we’re excited to share some new gadgets and gizmos we’ve been cooking up, starting with our evolved mission, vision and brand identity.

Imagine a Place to Talk and Hang Out

Back in 2019, we started hearing all sorts of stories about how people were using Discord in unexpected ways, so we embarked on a journey to discover exactly what everyone was doing.

Our mission has always been about creating space for people to hang out and find belonging, initially through playing games with friends. But we learned that many of you had been using Discord for much more. This inspired our “Your place to talk” campaign last year and as we’ve continued to grow, so has that learning.

A few things stood out: we heard you want us to stay true to the random, unpredictable Discord you know so well, while encouraging everyone to feel comfortable joining up and having fun.

Today, we’re evolving again, influenced by thousands of interviews and comments with people who use Discord.

What’s been updated? We’ve fine tuned our brand identity including colors, and art, and style. You are already seeing the new look throughout this blog post.

A few of my favorite things:

Brighter colors and all different kinds of characters whether 2D or 3D, one arm or three legs — the more unique, the better! Plus, Wumpus and Nelly are still around. :D

Our new art direction is a crazy mash-up that merges real life and imagination to celebrate the authentic and playful ways many of you like to express yourselves.

Imagine a Place is our new creative campaign that was written by you. Like our loading lines of yesteryear, we polled hundreds of you for fun catchphrases to incorporate in our campaign.

All in all, we’re still the same Discord. Our blurple is more vibrant, and our logo Clyde still pays homage to our love for games just with more um… robust… shoulder buttons.

Our goal with this new look and feel is to keep our playful and original vibe while being more inclusive and welcoming to new friends and communities. You can read more about the work we’ve been doing at dis.gd/ournewlook.

Stage Discovery: A New Way to Hang Out and Find Belonging

Discord is first and foremost about friendships and community. Voice channels have been part of what makes Discord special from day one, and as communities have grown, so have their needs.

We recently launched Stage Channels to give larger communities an easy way to host panels, comedy nights, or really any kind of live audio event. Today we’re announcing Stage Discovery, a new feature that will allow you to explore these audio events without needing to hop in and out of servers to find the ones you want to check out.

Discord is about friends and communities, and we believe Stage Discovery will allow you to find audio events you’ll want to experience with your friends, just like a physical event.

Lookout for Stage Discovery coming in June with some exciting creators to help us kick things off! Let’s just say one rhymes with…… rhymes.

Mega Bonus Pack

We’re always building, experimenting and finding ways to make Discord more useful.

We know how much hard work goes into hosting community events. Some of you have been asking us for a way to make it really easy to host a paid event — like a special meet and greet, a class on financial literacy, or even tutoring. Along with Stage Discovery, we’re starting to test paid tickets for your extra, extra special audio events. It’s the first feature where you’ll be able to earn money through Discord, and it’s in private beta for now while we learn how to make it great for everyone.

And, our most requested feature — Threads — is coming to Discord this summer, which will make text chats even easier and more streamlined so you can go down those rabbit holes whenever you want. You heard it here: Threads. Are. Coming.

Our Responsibility

On our sixth birthday, as we see over 150 million people using Discord every month, we feel a tremendous responsibility to continue making Discord a safe place. We’re continuing to invest in Trust & Safety while adding tools to help support communities of all shapes and sizes. Just last week we introduced a new exam as part of our Moderator Academy. Also, a special shout out to all the community moderators and admins out there who help keep their servers safe.

We’ve been hard at work on these changes and hope you like them as much as we do. As we get ready for another trip around the sun, we’re excited to bring these new features to you as soon as we can.

Look out for the “Imagine a Place” campaign coming to a big (or little) screen near you.

— Jason & Stan