Latest news with #PeterSellis
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Discord explores virtual rewards for its ad product as it prepares for a potential IPO
Discord announced on Wednesday that it's experimenting with a new virtual reward system aimed at encouraging more users to engage with its interactive ads. This new feature, called 'Orbs,' comes on the heels of the company preparing for a potential IPO. Users can earn Orbs by completing 'Quests,' Discord's ad format where advertisers incentivize users to watch product videos or play games by rewarding them with virtual items. The addition of Orbs gives users the chance to redeem exclusive digital items from Discord's Shop, including Nitro credits, profile badges, avatar decorations, profile effects, and items from main collections. It's clear that the goal of Orbs is to encourage more interaction with Quests as Discord seeks to demonstrate to partners that it can offer a scalable ad business. The company has reportedly discussed a possible IPO with investment bankers, per The New York Times. Last month, Peter Sellis, Discord's senior vice president of product, highlighted the success of Quests. He reported that, over the past year, more than 70 Quests achieved a 10% acceptance rate with millions of rewards earned, according to the company's internal data. Quests are located in the bottom left corner of the app on PC and gaming consoles. Plans are in place to expand Quests to mobile devices in June. The Orbs experiment may also entice users who don't have a subscription to try Nitro, as they can spend Orbs on credits instead of using a payment method. For instance, users need 1,400 Orbs to get three free days of Nitro, which typically costs $10 per month. Orbs is being rolled out to a small group of users and will soon expand globally. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
28-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Discord explores virtual rewards for its ad product as it prepares for a potential IPO
Discord announced on Wednesday that it's experimenting with a new virtual reward system aimed at encouraging more users to engage with its interactive ads. This new feature, called 'Orbs,' comes on the heels of the company preparing for a potential IPO. Users can earn Orbs by completing 'Quests,' Discord's ad format where advertisers incentivize users to watch product videos or play games by rewarding them with virtual items. The addition of Orbs gives users the chance to redeem exclusive digital items from Discord's Shop, including Nitro credits, profile badges, avatar decorations, profile effects, and items from main collections. It's clear that the goal of Orbs is to encourage more interaction with Quests as Discord seeks to demonstrate to partners that it can offer a scalable ad business. The company has reportedly discussed a possible IPO with investment bankers, per The New York Times. Image Credits:Discord Last month, Peter Sellis, Discord's senior vice president of product, highlighted the success of Quests. He reported that, over the past year, more than 70 Quests achieved a 10% acceptance rate with millions of rewards earned, according to the company's internal data. Quests are located in the bottom left corner of the app on PC and gaming consoles. Plans are in place to expand Quests to mobile devices in June. The Orbs experiment may also entice users who don't have a subscription to try Nitro, as they can spend Orbs on credits instead of using a payment method. For instance, users need 1,400 Orbs to get three free days of Nitro, which typically costs $10 per month. Orbs is being rolled out to a small group of users and will soon expand globally.
The Verge
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Discord's new currency pays users to interact with ads
Discord is beta testing 'Discord Orbs,' a new in-app currency that can be redeemed for digital items, Discord SVP of product Peter Sellis announced in an email to The Verge. Users earn Orbs by completing the app's promotional Quests, Discord's initiative that rewards participants who interact with advertiser content like videos or stream specific games to friends. In addition to spending Orbs on regular items on the Discord Shop, users can exchange the digital tokens for Orb exclusives like special badges or 3-day passes to try out Discord's subscription service, Discord Nitro. Discord says Orbs are rolling out globally to a 'small number' of its users to start before a wider rollout. If you're part of the beta test for Orbs, you will get a notification like the one below. Before this, publishers or brands that offered Quests had to provide their own rewards — things like avatar decorations or in-game bonuses. They can still do that if they want, Discord spokesperson Bradley Sheets tells The Verge in an email; awarding Orbs is simply an alternative option.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Discord seeks to solve a problem that it created
Discord is entering its second decade as a company and seeking to go public. Along the way, it's changed the way that online communities interact, turning groups that may have previously existed as forums or message boards into multi-channel instant message servers. Now, everything finds a home on Discord, whether it's an AI platform like Midjourney (Discord's largest server), an international gaming community, or a school club. But message boards still serve their purpose. Sometimes, there's value in more incremental, organized commentary in a forum, as opposed to the rapidity of real-time, casual chats on Discord, which can flood users with an overwhelming number of unread messages and potentially obscure the most useful information. According to The Verge, Discord's SVP of product, Peter Sellis, says that the company is thinking about how to solve this issue. He said that Discord wants to work on features that are "more amicable to structured knowledge sharing, like forums, that we could probably do a better job of investing in." Another proposed solution to this clutter is to use an LLM to summarize long streams of messages. But culture among Discord users varies so widely that the embrace of AI could simultaneously excite and enrage its audience. With LLMs, Sellis said, Discord could take a long, meandering conversation and turn it into "something that could be more sharable and syndicated across the web." However, he said that he and his team hadn't "seen a solution that we feel great about yet." With a new CEO at its helm and an imminent IPO, Discord is probably in for more than a few updates. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data
TechCrunch
23-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Discord seeks to solve a problem that it created
In Brief Discord is entering its second decade as a company and seeking to go public. Along the way, it's changed the way that online communities interact, turning groups that may have previously existed as forums or message boards into multi-channel instant message servers. Now, everything finds a home on Discord, whether it's an AI platform like Midjourney (Discord's largest server), an international gaming community, or a school club. But message boards still serve their purpose. Sometimes, there's value in more incremental, organized commentary in a forum, as opposed to the rapidity of real-time, casual chats on Discord, which can flood users with an overwhelming number of unread messages and potentially obscure the most useful information. According to The Verge, Discord's SVP of product, Peter Sellis, says that the company is thinking about how to solve this issue. He said that Discord wants to work on features that are 'more amicable to structured knowledge sharing, like forums, that we could probably do a better job of investing in.' Another proposed solution to this clutter is to use an LLM to summarize long streams of messages. But culture among Discord users varies so widely that the embrace of AI could simultaneously excite and enrage its audience. With LLMs, Sellis said, Discord could take a long, meandering conversation and turn it into 'something that could be more sharable and syndicated across the web.' However, he said that he and his team hadn't 'seen a solution that we feel great about yet.' With a new CEO at its helm and an imminent IPO, Discord is probably in for more than a few updates.
