The Sams Report: The Perfect Discord Acquisition

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Brad Sams in Podcasts, The Sams Report with 8 Comments

On this episode of the Sams Report, Microsoft made a lot of moves in the Xbox world, SharePoint turns 20, and File Explorer has new Icons.

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Comments (9)

9 responses to “The Sams Report: The Perfect Discord Acquisition”

  1. William Clark

    First, Microsoft's consumer "communication" strategy is a mess. Once upon a time we had Skype, then it kind of went away, then it came back. Even when I didn't want it installed on my machine. Teams is a decent business application but has so many features that people don't need or want in a consumer focused product.


    My concern for Discord is that MS will take it and make it exclusive to Xbox gaming accounts. I don't want that as I don't use my Xbox account very often, if at all. Microsoft will be out in the cold if they don't get their act together.

    9 months ago
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  2. j5

    Why is everyone so down on Microsoft buying Discord?

    The comments I read are all about how Microsoft is going to ruin it or they ruined Skype.

    I'm really curious what I'm missing here. Because Skype is still around with millions of users.

    Teams has been doing great with business and education markets. I use Teams for work and it's just gotten better with more features since the pandemic happened. And when we have issues our IT department encourages us to put tickets in with our specific issues so they could take them to Microsoft and they've been getting fixed. Most Teams issues have been due to user error.


    9 months ago
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    • chronocidal

      In reply to j5:

      My personal experience with Skype is that I have a rather large circle of friends who used to use it as a casual gaming chat program, something in the vein of MSN Messenger.


      Skype used to be a fairly simple and clean voice/chat program, before Microsoft acquired it, changed the styling, and it morphed into a bloated mess that became less and less useful for gamers. It became a memory and processing hog that caused issues with games and some hardware. The end of it for me was when they converted the clean text interface into a blobby SMS-styled window. Maybe they wanted it to be easier to read? All it did for me was cut the number of messages that fit on-screen at once in half.


      Discord is what my entire circle of online contacts moved to once Skype became something no one liked using anymore. And make no mistake, many people I know were rather irritated at Microsoft for driving that change. There's a precedent here. The aforementioned MSN was killed off, and people migrated to Skype. Microsoft acquired Skype, and gradually deteriorated it to the point that gamers jumped to Discord. I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to suggest that there's a fair amount of anti-Microsoft sentiment spread about the Discord community by this point. Brad is entirely on the nose, Microsoft is taking a big risk here, and it's probably going to have to fight an uphill battle to gain the trust of the wider PC gaming community. I expect some people to leave Discord purely on principle if this sale goes through.


      Brad put it very well in his video, MS needs to let Discord continue being Discord, and only focus on integrating its strengths. The last thing I want to see happen to Discord is to have MS bulldoze their way through the existing program, add a ton of new functionality and integration that none of its existing userbase asked for, and gradually degrade how well it performs in its primary role, until winds up just the newest abandoned gaming chat program on the junkpile.


      Sorry to make such a wall of text to digest, but to me, what it boils down to is that It's not so much about MS ruining Discord entirely. It's about them changing things its current audience likes, and potentially alienating them, in the effort to attract a new audience that MS cares more about.

      9 months ago
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    • Paul Thurrott

      People fear change, they remember the defeats but not the victories. Microsoft has done well by GitHub, Minecraft, and LinkedIn. I feel like it can do well by Discord as well. And yes, Mixer, we get it. But Mixer just never got off the ground userbase-wise, and Microsoft DID try to make this happen. Among other things, it lured popular streamers away from other services at great cost.
      9 months ago
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      • vladimir

        In reply to paul-thurrott:


        yes, they did well when they didn't change anything. Github, Minecraft and Linkedin just continued to exist as they were before. The successful acquisitions have been completely transparent, at least from the user perspective. But each time they intervene, they make a mess. One problem is usually the transition to Azure, which is incredibly slow and ends up killing the product, as in wunderlist. Another problem is when they start adding a bunch of features and integrations that nobody wants. I think some concern from the discord community is understandable

        9 months ago
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