Discord acquires Gas
Discord has acquired the Gas social app.
The poll-based app has become popular among teens in the US in recent months, allowing friends to share compliments with each other. The app is designed for anonymous compliments and positive affirmations or, as kids say, gassing your friends up.
Gas has polls that ask users to vote for things like the most beautiful person they’ve met or the classmate that isn’t afraid to get in trouble. It has soared in popularity among high schoolers since launching in August.
One of the co-creators of TBH, a very similar teenager app acquired and shut down by Facebook, created Gas, which has caught the attention of more than one million daily active users and 30,000 new users per hour in October.
“Gas’s founders have a proven track record of creating exciting apps and experiences, and we’re thrilled to work with their team to take things to the next level,” says Discord in a blog post announcing the Gas acquisition. “At this time, Gas will continue as its own standalone app and the Gas team will be joining Discord to help our efforts to continue to grow across new and core audiences.”
Discord hasn’t disclosed the terms of its acquisition, but it’s clearly part of a broader and continued effort to target communities and users outside of just gaming.
Discord raised $100 million in 2020 with a big plan to expand beyond the gaming community, and the company has been targeting non-gaming creators and communities ever since. That’s resulted in a bigger focus on apps and bots, YouTube integration, a US$2.99 Nitro Basic subscription, and even the ability for Discord users to monetise their servers.
Gas’s small team (just four people, according to Nikita Bier in October) will be joining Discord and keeping the app running.
The Wall Street Journal previously named Gas the “hottest app right now” in October after it toppled TikTok and other popular social apps in Apple’s App Store charts.
While Discord is popular among teens, it will likely be looking toward the Gas team to provide ideas for how to improve its own app and reach new communities.
@tomwarren
