Discord updates mobile app to load faster, improve messaging

One Thing Today in Tech

Discord has rolled out a bunch of improvements to its mobile app on both Android and iOS, but first:

Byju Raveendran is contemplating using his 10-12 percent direct shareholding in the test-prep chain Aakash to raise about Rs. 600 crore to shore up his beleaguered ed-tech venture, Think & Learn, The Arc reported yesterday, citing sources it didn’t name. Thing & Learn, which operates the loss making BYJU’S online education platform, is under government scrutiny for a host of lapses.

ZestMoney, a buy now pay later fintech startup in Bengaluru, is shutting down, and has informed its 150 remaining employees that it’s done, according to multiple media reports. The company was founded in 2015 and provided loans to those without credit cards or any other formal financing options.

One thing today:

In one thing today, Discord, which is where you’ll find many of the Gen Z, apart from Instagram, has overhauled its mobile app to work more like, well, a mobile app

“When we launched the Discord mobile app in 2015, our focus was on building great products for people who play games on PC, with mobile serving as a companion app for when you were away from your keyboard,” Francesco Polizzi, group product manager at Discord, says in a blog post on Dec. 5, announcing the new updates.

“Now, with more users spending time using Discord on the go, we’re excited to roll out a faster, more reliable app than before, designed specifically for mobile,” Francesco says.

The updated app, on both Android and iOS, brings faster app loading, better navigation, improved media sharing and voice and video experience, and an updated night mode.

Discord has previously implemented features such as the global DM search on the app. After yesterday’s update, which is available in India also, app-open time is reduced by 43 percent on iOS and 55 percent on Android, and users can access more messages when offline, according to the company.

Free users can now upload files of up to 25MB in size.

Discord, which started as an online hangout for PC gamers has evolved into a wider platform where one can find groups of users with varied interests. Today the company says it has 150 million users around the world.

You can find the full list of improvements and updates on Discord’s website. Or you can use the link to the blog post in our show notes.

One area where Discord has faced criticism is with respect to how it dragged its feet on protecting youngsters, according to multiple media reports. The company implemented some limited parental controls since only July this year, when it added an opt-in feature called family center.

This feature requires the consent of your child to set up the family center on both the teen’s app and on the parents’ smartphones. Once done it will provide some high-level information to parents on the teen’s Discord activity.

I would highly recommend reading a post titled A Parent’s Guide to Discord by the Social Media Victims Law Center in the US. The center warns that Discord requires users to be 13 years of age but does not ask for any documentation for proof of age. Like many other internet platforms, Discord can also be used by youngsters to access pornography and even drugs.

And if you are parents to young teens, especially, this might be a good time to find out if they use Discord, talk about it, and agree on using the Family Center feature.