Discord was originally designed to be a place where gamers can create communities and interact. Today, it is a text, voice, and video chat application used by more than 140 million people per month to talk and spend time with their friends and like-minded people (Discord, n.d.). Discord is built in a way to allow its participants to send messages to each other within communities, which are called ‘servers’. According to Delfino and Dean (2021), servers are full of text channels (where members type to talk to others) and voice channels (where members voice chat with others). In addition to that, images, videos, music, and Internet links can be shared there. For all of that to be possible, Discord employs efficient IT infrastructure.
When it comes to communication systems, the application utilizes WebRTC, which is a real-time communication technology. According to Bhatia (2021), it allows Discord to run on multiple platforms and lets developers reuse code. On top of WebRTC’s native library, there is a media engine that is used for Android, iOS, and desktop applications. In terms of its tech stacks, Discord’s front-end one contains Flux and React. The back-end construction and its signaling servers are written in the language of Elixir. Moreover, Discord employs Rust in several locations across the software stack, such as the gaming software development kit and multiple back-end services (Bhatia, 2021). Discord’s hardware solution is a content distribution network that is provided to it by Cloudflare, a content delivery company (Cloudflare, n.d.). The application’s main data resource is Derived, the system that was built specifically to maintain Discord’s data warehouse (Meas, 2021). Finally, since the company’s inception in 2015, it has grown to more than 1200 employees who help make the application better every day (Comparably, 2022). In conclusion, the technology behind Discord is varied and extensive, which is one of the key reasons for its success.
References
Bhatia, N. (2021). How much does it cost to develop an app like Discord? Apptunix.
Cloudflare. (n.d.). Discord.
Comparably. (2022). Discord headquarters.
Delfino, D., & Dean, G. (2021). What is Discord? A guide to the popular group-chatting app. Business Insider.
Discord. (n.d.). What is Discord?
Meas, D. (2021). How Discord creates insights from trillions of data points. Discord.