Post #8: Diffusion of Innovations

In this post, I will be applying the Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Discord, and how it changed over time.

Step One: Innovators

Discord was created by co-creators Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy. Citron originally came up with the concept because it was difficult gaming with friends while using voice over IP (VoIP) software such as Skype and Teamspeak. Both were irritating to use and annoying to navigate, but they were the so-called “best” available VoIP at the time.

When Citron was in the process of creating Discord, he made a small company named Hammer & Chisel to help create his vision. There, Vishnevskiy assisted him a lot during the app’s development. The process was slow and there were a lot of issues in development; Citron would show his gamer friend group the app’s progress, and they tested it out as it developed. Citron, Vishnevskiy, H&C, and the friends were the Innovators of Discord.

Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy

Step Two: Early Adopters

Discord was publicly released in May 13, 2015 under the domain name discordapp.com. At the time, there were no specific moves to target any specific audience. However, on its launch day, one person in the FFXIV subreddit posted about Discord (with a link to their server) to talk about a new expansion pack for the game on. Citron and Vishnevskiy jumped into the server as well, hopped into the server’s voice chat, and started talking to people who showed up. Those Redditors would go back on Reddit, talk about the application and the “pretty cool and chill developers”, and even more people would sign up for Discord. Several hundred people registered that first day.

All of these FFXIV players became Early Adopters of Discord.

Step Three: Early Majority

Soon, Discord became used widely by esports and LAN tournaments as a means to communication. It also was used a lot by Twitch streamers, who made servers to meet and connect with their community of viewers.  Discord’s tagline was “It’s time to ditch Skype and Teamspeak.” And many people did.

Those were not the only users of Discord; regular gamers used the application as well. I was one of them. I created my account August 2015, because I heard friends talking about a cool new voice-chatting app called Discord that wasn’t as finicky as Skype. 

Although Discord was made “by gamers, for gamers”, these aren’t the only people using Discord. Over the years, many subreddits have their own discord servers, such as r/HellsKitchen and r/Raleigh. A lot of online communities have servers as well, to discuss TV shows, hobbies, etc.

Step Four: Late Majority

The fourth category came at the beginning of this year (2020). After the COVID-19 pandemic forced a lot of schools, universities, workplaces, etc to essentially “shut down” and send everyone to WOH, Discord changed its motto from “Chat for Gamers” to “Chat for Communities and Friends”. This change introduced server templates on Discord, one of those being a “classroom”, so teachers and professors could turn to Discord to make sure students wouldn’t fall behind and can still continue to learn. 

Example Classroom Template on Discord

Step Five: Laggards

While Discord is now one of the top VoiP applications and is now friendly to non-gamers as well, there are still people who aren’t using it, and don’t plan on it. There are still some friend groups, communities, etc. who use VoiP apps such as Teamspeak, Skype, or Curse Voice.

 

Post #7: EOTO Communication Technology (Emoticons)

Blog 8:

On October 15th, one of my classmates, Hannah, presented her Each One Teach One assignment where she researched the history and pro/cons of emoticons.

Emoticons were discovered in 1982 by Scott Fahlman. It started with the simple “:-)” to represent a smiling face, and a “:-(” to represent a frowning face. The smiling face was for a humorous post and the frowning face meant a serious post on message boards. After the discovery of these faces, emoticons went viral on message boards everywhere.

In 1999, the first ever “emoji” was created by a Japanese artist. Later on, in 2010, Unicode (a system that unifies encoding throughout different platforms) adopted emojis, and a year later, Apple created an emoji keyboard for their products. Now, Apple products get new emojis every year, with the latest ones featuring a black cat, teapot, bubble tea, the transgender flag, and more.

Emoticons have many benefits. Emoticons can help convey the user’s emotions, and allows for a better understanding of a meaning behind a sentence. It prevents other people from taking a happy message in a mean context. It can also be understood despite languages, which is very important for global communication. Emoticons are quick and easy to use, and can convey a message faster than typing one out. It also makes messages and posts more personal; sending a message with an emoji usually resonates with someone more than without the emoji.

However, emoticons have many downsides too. They are seen as very unprofessional, and are usually not socially allowed in places of work or serious matter. Emoticons and emojis can also be very misleading, as certain emojis now have different interpretations rather than what they actually are. For example, the goat emoji  can be used to refer to the Greatest Of All Time, or the G.O.A.T.