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Comment by ryu2k2 | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a real market for a non-profit discord-like platform on the open web, especially with all the reddit drama going on.

Part of me wants to build this. The larger part knows I'll never ship a game when I keep letting web projects get into the way.

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I admire your goals and wish you success, but IMO the biggest obstacle to be tackled is how to sustainably operate such a platform. If data is hosted centrally, someone needs to pay the server bills. This is fine for a small community but if user growth reaches critical mass, it has to be monetized to the point where server costs can be covered. If data is decentralized, then the potential fragmentation will be a hurdle for user adoption. Discord succeeded because it required zero tutorial to use and no setup beyond making an account, compared to previous iterations of VoIP/IRC software. This was a crucial success factor in attractig non-gamers during the pandemic.

>The larger part knows I'll never ship a game when I keep letting web projects get into the way.

I don't know if you knew this, but Slack started as a project for a game dev team to communicate. https://wiredelta.com/how-was-slack-developed/

and, notably, Discord too started out trying to make a game.

Matrix is this (IMO), but self-hosted. And I doubt the ability of a non-profit to eat (or have subsidized) hosting as they approach Discord's size

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