I had a look one of the other days to learn more about the platform we are so fond of in the Steem ecosystem to set up our chat servers - Discord.
At the time I thought it might be a potential vulnerability to rely so heavily on one centralized platform for our conversations. It's not the only messaging app we use, but it was highly adopted within the Steem communities, most likely because they support anonymity and privacy, which is also a right on Steem. Maybe the fact one could run bots on it is another important factor, and we know many important discord communities have some bots installed and running.
But if you are wondering how would we manage if we couldn't use discord (or any other messaging app outside the Steem ecosystem for that matter), I believe the stronger we get, the likelier it is that we will have alternatives within our ecosystem and some of the major (d)apps will have their own chat systems, probably centralized (not on the blockchain). There is also steem.chat we can go back to, but true, that's not Discord, with all its features.
Does D.tube still have the chat system for live broadcasts? Sorry, I'm not a regular D.tube user, so I really don't know.
Steem Monsters has an internal chat working for guild members. Drugwars too, even a public and private one, but not sure which of them work or how well they do, because there's not much activity in the livechat from what I see.
So important (d)apps on Steem, where chatting helps, tend to add them in time, as they develop.
Anyway, back to Discord.
When I looked at its history, I discovered that while its owner tried to create a game, he "noticed how difficult it was for his team to work out tactics in games like Final Fantasy XIV and League of Legends using available voice over IP (VoIP) software". That's how Discord was born.
So Discord came out as a handy tool in the development of what the owner believed would be a great game. The game wasn't successful, but we can't say the same about the tool.
This was almost an accident, right? But filling in the right need at the right time made it hit jackpot. And this can happen on Steem as well: an app that will grow exponentially in a short while.
Discord was publicly release in May 2015, and mainly pushed at Reddit communities at first. Here's how Discord was received:
By January 2016, Hammer & Chisel claimed that Discord had been used by 3 million people, with growth of 1 million per month, reaching 11 million users in July that year.[15][36] By December 2016, the company reported it had 25 million users worldwide.[21] By the end of 2017, the service had drawn nearly 90 million users, with roughly 1.5 million new users each week.[37] With the service's third anniversary, Discord stated that it had 130 million unique registered users.[38][39] The company observed that while the bulk of their servers are used for gaming-related purposes, a small number have been created by users for non-gaming activities, like stock trading, fantasy football, and other shared interest groups.[28]
In May 2016, one year after the software's release, Tom Marks, writing for PC Gamer, described Discord as the best VoIP service available.[12] Lifehacker has praised Discord's interface, ease of use and platform compatibility.[40]
On the occasion of its fourth-anniversary celebrations: May 2019, Discord, has announced that it has more than 250 million registered users across its web and mobile platforms. The company had reported 130 million registered users last May. In a press release on 11 May 2019, the company said 56 million people use its service every month, sending 25 billion messages (850 million per day). The company also revealed that its top-7 most popular verified servers include: Fortnite, SpellBreak, PUBG Mobile, Clash Royale, Minecraft, ZombsRoyale and Rainbow 6.[41]
250m users after 4 years. That's huge! Success also started to create them problems, as certain communities' chat servers were "raided" and Discord apparently was used to orchestrate some illegal activities. So, in the future, we will likely see more censorship on Discord from the company owning it.
Sure, once you get to that size you are on the radar of many institutions, but see how easy it is to get from nothing to mass adoption? Or, at least, if not easy, quickly?
Why couldn't that happen with one app on Steem some day?
There is of course the alternative for Steem to go directly to an already huge online business, and offer them the "SMT addon" to their business model.
Hey, how about a Discord app SMT? :) We already have an affinity for Discord. Do you think they would for SMT? Is that feasible? 250m users introduced to Steem! How does that sound in terms of mass adoption?
There are many ways Steem could succeed in growing hundred if not thousand fold. All what is needed is one successful (d)app on Steem which brings in the masses, or one big business with many millions of users adding SMTs.