> Can someone explain to me how Discord got so big in the first place, particularly for non-gaming uses?

It won by simply building a vastly superior product during its growth phase.

For gamers, it replaced fragmented, clunky, or paid alternatives (TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Mumble, Skype) with a frictionless, free app that had excellent voice quality and modern UX.

It worked so perfectly for gaming communities that non-gamers inevitably took notice, realizing it was effectively a better, free version of Slack for community building.

But that was the user-acquisition era. Now, we're seeing the classic enshittification phase.

Every other notification badge is an alert trying to sell you something. I still use it, but the product development focus seems to have entirely shifted to selling $9.99/month "blinky bullshit." I understand they have to monetize eventually, but it's exhausting.

Ultimately, it got big because for a few years, it was undeniably the best, cleanest chat client on the market. It was just relentlessly good for the user.

Whether it stays good, or follows down the Microsoft path of turning into a full-on ad-distribution network remains to be seen. But right now, despite all the crap sales, it's still pretty good... (=