Thursday is Discord’s sixth birthday, and to celebrate, the company is announcing some new features — including one coming in June to help people discover its new Clubhouse-like social audio rooms called Stage Channels.
The new “Stage Discovery” feature will let you see a feed of public Stage Channels you might be interested in that’s curated using machine learning. You can listen to a Stage Channel’s audio right from the feed, and if you want, you can then hop into the room so that you can be part of the audience. While in a public room, you might also see a link to join the Discord server where the Stage Channel is being hosted if you want to join the community that’s hosting the conversation.
Once Stage Discovery has rolled out, which Discord tells The Verge will happen on June 1st, you’ll be able to access the feed via a new Stage Channels icon found on the main toolbar in the mobile app and in the Home menu on desktop.
Discord says that Stage Channels can’t use profane language in their titles or descriptions, and explicit, graphic, or sexual content is prohibited. Users can report Stage Channels that violate the rules. And to help prevent bad stuff from bubbling up the feed, the company will also enforce its policies through technology, Discord’s own trust and safety team, and community moderation.
The new discovery feed isn’t the only new Stage Channels feature on the way. Discord is also working on ticketed Stage Channels, meaning hosts will be able to charge for access to a Stage Channel. They’ll be rolling out this month, first in a pilot with fewer than 50 US-based creators. A Discord spokesperson wouldn’t say if it will take a cut of ticket sales, though they noted that the company is evaluating options during the experiment. Discord follows Twitter in announcing ticketed social audio rooms.
And for those of you who sometimes find following Discord conversations to be overwhelming (like me), you’ll be pleased to hear that the company plans to add the ability to make threads, which should make it easier to corral conversations. Discord says threads will start rolling out this summer and will be available to all servers before the end of this year.
Alongside the new features announced today, Discord is unveiling a new brand identity with a slightly tweaked logo (which, if you didn’t know, is named Clyde). You can see the new logo at the top of this post or in this GIF.
Discord, which was originally built as a place for gamers to hang out and talk, has grown significantly during the pandemic, particularly as many non-gaming communities have started to use the service. The company revealed that it now has more than 150 million monthly active users, up from 140 million in December.
