microsoft could acquire discord for more than $10 billion as soon as april, according to a new report.
earlier this week, a number of independent reports, starting with venturebeat, claimed that san francisco-based discord, a gaming-focused social-media company, was talking to a number of potential suitors. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that it's down to just microsoft, the exclusive potential purchaser, which may be ready to pay $10 billion-plus for discord by april.

In my humble, microsoft-watching opinion, discord makes a lot more sense for microsoft to buy than tiktok or pinterest, two other "communities" the company was eyeing as a way to grow its consumer footprint. gaming is microsoft's most successful consumer space. users already are able to link their xbox accounts to discord. 

microsoft already has skype and teams for voice, video and text chatting -- services that discord also provides. and microsoft's last foray into growing a gaming community via its mixer game-streaming acquisition, didn't end so well. But it still feels like the potential synergies outweigh the negatives.

If microsoft follows its established playbook, it will allow discord to run mostly independently, as it has done with LinkedIn and GitHub. Little would likely change for people who use discord to chat while gaming and/or as a gathering place to socialize in various channels -- at least in the short term. discord is said to run its services on google cloud, but a move to Azure would likely take quite a while (if LinkedIn is any indication).

here is the page for the article  -----> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-may-be-poised-to-buy-its-next-community-discord/    (edit: i fixed the broken article link it works now)

Edited April 1, 20215 yr by VistaEX

They should just be aware that Discord has multiple free alternatives who are poised to take advantage of any missteps here. And once users are driven out due to a corporate acquisition and subsequent ruining of a community, they do not come back. That community will slowly bleed to death from a thousand cuts. I've seen it happen too many times.