Feedback about marketing & feature list on website

[floprott]

(I posted this here because it's kind of a feedback, even tho it looks like a discussion thread and probably will have some)

I saw many people in this forums bashing against ts3's competition for doing so many bad things. Even tho most of them are just conspiracy theories or unproved claims I think it's time to also take a look on the other side: Teamspeaks marketing. First off, Teamspeak had some big marketing fails with TS5. It was completely intransparent. They missed all their deadlines and still the only way to find any explanation at all is to search somewhere deep in their forums. It shouldn't be like that. I'd at least put out a huge FAQ + statement after having such a big fail.

After talking about this let's start with their main marketing. I'll especially talk about this site because it contains almost all their points and especially it shows all the manipulation, they lying and so on.

The first big part of the page is the following comparison


-> "SPAM Free"
First point and already the first plain lie. Skype is backed by microsoft and they did quite much to fight spam in the last time, especially because they focus on business users and therefore don't want bots spamming viruses or porn pages around. Anyway, you can still discuss whether their algorithms are effective or not. But there we get to the next and more critical one: Dicsord. They have captchas, automated checks for bots, a rate limit for messaging, slow modes for chats, image filtering for explicit content, mobile number verifications and several other methods to prevent spam. Also thanks to the open api their are hundreds of bots which advance this system even more. So I think it's fine to call the claim that they are not "Spam free" a blank lie.

-> "Military-Grade Encryption"
This one is literally a meme in IT communities. It's a pure buzzword. They use the same encryption as the military, that's right. But maybe they should mention that every website with HTTPS is also using the same encryption algorithms. Later on the page they even confirm this "With TS3, AES-based encryption can be enabled for the entire server [...]". And here are they lying again. I know for sure that both Discord and Skype are using HTTPS/WSS and therefore also use military grade encryption. If you don't believe me, check out their pages and look into the URL bar.

-> "Advanced Permission Controls"
That's correct, however it's worth to mention that they are really highly complex. I'd even say that it's more of a security risk for most casual players than a feature. It did not just happen once that you could elevate your rank upwards because some numbers were set wrongly.

-> "Host your own private server"
Yea, but only for a few people except you wanna pay high license fees. One of the discord servers I'm managing got around 310 members, to get all of them online at once I'd have to pay 300$ per year on teamspeak, while it costs me 0$ on discord. Teamspeak sells you essential features, that's not a good nor a modern business practise.

-> "Anonymous Usage"
Anonym to who? Teamspeak itself isn't able to track me, but servers are. You can track people by their identity and the even worse thing, by their IP. Everyone with the permissions can get your IP and use it for several things like tracking your geolocation (not exact, but approximate) or just dos you offline. And believe me, that happens quite often...

-> "In-Game Overlay"
Why exactly is yours in green? From my view as a user this suggests that it is better in some way, however from my knowledge that's not the case

-> "SDK Available"
The clientside SDK seems not to be that good considering the small amount of good plugins for it. Anyway, you're comparing it to discords API, so I think it's correct to conclude that you also want to compare your server bot/query api to discords. Discord has an advanced, easy to use restapi which is based on protocol standards and is available in literally every programming language. And what do you have? A terrible serverapi with a proprietary protocol over an unencrypted telnet connection. It's support is not good and working with it is neither. Also you can't even create an own server because the entire protocol is proprietary. Even tho discord does not offer custom servers you could still mod discord and create one, because they are also using a rest api for their normal application. Therefore I think it is an impudence to write "Only API" if it's literally a thousand times better than yours. I'd write "Only proprietary SDK" or even better, just leave the point out.

-> "Will not provide your data to 3rd parties"
Classic. Discord claims to not provide any data to 3rd parties. Also they are overall very transparent (something you can't call yourself) and their business model is well known, so how do you get to the claim that they're providing data to third parties? You literally claim this so often also here in the forums but your only proof is your biased mind. If I were discord I'd sue you for that because what you do their is destroying their reputation based on a conspiracy theory...

-> "Mobile App"
You might wanna mention that your apps costs money and is less modern than your ts3 client. You wrote "API Only" to discord so you can now also write "Paid only".

-> "Minimal CPU Usage"
Based on what data do you create this claim? I don't see such a big difference in CPU usage. Loading views might create higher loads due to the complex rendering, however in idle it's almost the same for me. So citation needed.

-> "Direct messaging"
You might wanna write "Text only" there, because compared to Skype and Dicsord you can't do direct calls. Also why is there no Messaging in general? Maybe because your chat looks like a 1998 chat room?


So, we're over all their main points of marketing. As you can see on the screenshot their colors are also highly manipulative. Others got red crosses or small white checkmarks while they got big green checkmarks. Overall they use every marketing trick to manipulate you and to sell you a worse product for an higher price.

Also I'm not even done with their entire page yet, but I actually don't see any reason to go on from here. There were already so many lies, manipulations and half-truths or things they tried to hide from you that I really don't need to go on. That's it. Teamspeak, your marketing is kinda terrible.

[Dimos]

I can heavily agree on most of the points there. Especially the mobil app is such a scam point in my opinion. Every major tech company offers their apps for free. Maybe they also offer some pro function for which you need to make a upgrade that costs, but at least the app itself is free.
Not with Teamspeak.
They give you a free client for nearly any OS but not mobile ones... well played @Teamspeak. Mobile is the biggest market nowadays

Furthermore the "Advanced Permission system" is kind of a joke now. The default basic version, that is enabled when installing TS3, is even less complex than for example the Discord one. And the advanced view is way, way to complex and doesn't even gives you every possibility.
For example, I still need to figure out how to make four different team server groups that can join four different channels (each group joins their own team channel).
Haven't figured it out yet. For an "Advanced permission system" this should be easy and one of the standard tasks.
But maybe, I'm just to dumb to understand it. So if anyone can explain me how to do it, I would be very thankful.

Also I think you forgot to write a "not" into the first sentence of the -> "SDK Available" bullet point. there are two "to"'s.

[fspower]

They give you a free client for nearly any OS but not mobile ones... well played @Teamspeak. Mobile is the biggest market nowadays

Generally speaking: probably. But look at the core audience here, mobile is the minority. What would be nice are chat channels with persistent history, like Discord. Then an app could be useful. In the current state it's probably not worth downloading.

[floprott]

Generally speaking: probably. But look at the core audience here, mobile is the minority. What would be nice are chat channels with persistent history, like Discord. Then an app could be useful. In the current state it's probably not worth downloading.

Literally everyone on the ts3 server I am active already wanted to join with their mobile phone at least once.

[Dimos]

Generally speaking: probably. But look at the core audience here, mobile is the minority. What would be nice are chat channels with persistent history, like Discord. Then an app could be useful. In the current state it's probably not worth downloading.

I use Discord on my phone more than on my PC.
So if TS goes the "Discord"-way with text channels and modern stuff blabla (which kinda looks like it judging by the first picture) then they need to make the app free. (And also rework it completely to be on pair with the client)

[Bituspy]

1) SPAM Free: Yes discord has slightly improved their system recently and is capable of preventing spam and bot attacks of users, but they've had to announce on their forums and the app itself to report these type of spam accounts to counter the massive intrusion of spam. I'd rather not consider it spam free totally.

2) Advanced Permission System: You need to spend more time to build up your community instead of trying to find easy toggle button sliders to figure out the group system. I think that investment of time pays of when you can allow/disallow users to enter, subscribe and various other permissions which require some complications. If you fail to make a good permission system then you should not touch the parts and just keep the interface standard (thats why they have given you standard and advanced version).

3) Hosting own Private server: The day discord released i hated one thing only.....it was the ability for every person to have its own server. Now you do not see anyone united staying in one channel or a server. You can however find them on various servers but you must scroll through many to find one guy. Additionally we should not forget that discord scattered the userbase all over instead of keeping it together. Now people themselves are not united anymore. This is how you scatter big communities. Your 300+ users will never come online because they are busy in one of their own servers and not interested to join yours.

4) Anonymous Usage: So you think a large number of TS server owners(admins and others who can see ur IP) have nothing to do but waste time tracking your account? Yes its their own private server they can be concerned about who you are but they are not going to waste their time selling out your data or share info. with another party.
TS itself is not concerned with your IP and what kinds of servers and communities you join, discord however tracks your IP and most of the crap you write in their chat. (However no confirmation is present but given the fact that their report system allows us to report users and servers who have malicious contents which is against the policy they sure have ways and means to track both).

or just dos you offline. And believe me, that happens quite often...

I guess you're toxic if someone has gone to the lengths of launching a network attack against you :P

5)

-> "Will not provide your data to 3rd parties"
Classic. Discord claims to not provide any data to 3rd parties. Also they are overall very transparent (something you can't call yourself) and their business model is well known, so how do you get to the claim that they're providing data to third parties? You literally claim this so often also here in the forums but your only proof is your biased mind. If I were discord I'd sue you for that because what you do their is destroying their reputation based on a conspiracy theory...

I think if they can write "ITS TIME TO DITCH SKYPE AND TEAMSPEAK" and keep it that way since many years teamspeak deserves to write anything about them as well :P

6) Minimal CPU Usage: Its true TS consumes less RAM and less CPU usage as compard to Discord (not just the rendering bump) but overall. If u want i can share my TS and Discord system stats.

I've not mentioned many other comparison points because I think all of these things are piece of marketting strategies. Highlighted in red and green colors, at least they want to do some comparison even after not releasing a competitive client candidate since many years.
I'd rather say they are not that blatant like discord who asks everyone who visits their site to ditch skype and TS first try their product later lol

I would love to see messaging system and channel based improvements too if i am gonna compare TS with anything else.

And ofc they should make the android(mobile) client(s) free of charge so more people can use it.

[floprott]

1) SPAM Free: Yes discord has slightly improved their system recently and is capable of preventing spam and bot attacks of users, but they've had to announce on their forums and the app itself to report these type of spam accounts to counter the massive intrusion of spam. I'd rather not consider it spam free totally.

It's as spam free as teamspeak. Yes, there will always be spam you can't prevent, but the system of discord is much more advanced. The only reason people don't flood teamspeaks very often is because there is no reason to. There are no globals chats you can spam and most voice chats are only for staff or with a password.

2) Advanced Permission System: You need to spend more time to build up your community instead of trying to find easy toggle button sliders to figure out the group system. I think that investment of time pays of when you can allow/disallow users to enter, subscribe and various other permissions which require some complications. If you fail to make a good permission system then you should not touch the parts and just keep the interface standard (thats why they have given you standard and advanced version).

That's not a counter argument. You just confirmed that it's much too overcomplicated. The thing is, you can do like 95% of the things you can do on teamspeak also on discord, but it's much simpler there. If there would be much people wanting more features then discord could integrate them into their simple permissions system and would absolutely beat teamspeak, but most people just don't want it. So overall discords decision is better for the vast majority of communities.

3) Hosting own Private server: The day discord released i hated one thing only.....it was the ability for every person to have its own server. Now you do not see anyone united staying in one channel or a server. You can however find them on various servers but you must scroll through many to find one guy. Additionally we should not forget that discord scattered the userbase all over instead of keeping it together. Now people themselves are not united anymore. This is how you scatter big communities. Your 300+ users will never come online because they are busy in one of their own servers and not interested to join yours.

There are no people in voice because discord does not force everyone into voice all the time. If you wanna talk with someone then you'll either call the person private or tell them to join into a channel. That's exactly how friends and I do this. Also don't forget that many discords are just there to write, not to talk. I can't see the scattering there. Only like 1/30 of my friends actually have an own discord.

4) Anonymous Usage: So you think a large number of TS server owners(admins and others who can see ur IP) have nothing to do but waste time tracking your account? Yes its their own private server they can be concerned about who you are but they are not going to waste their time selling out your data or share info. with another party.
TS itself is not concerned with your IP and what kinds of servers and communities you join, discord however tracks your IP and most of the crap you write in their chat. (However no confirmation is present but given the fact that their report system allows us to report users and servers who have malicious contents which is against the policy they sure have ways and means to track both).
I guess you're toxic if someone has gone to the lengths of launching a network attack against you :P

Again not a counter argument. They could track me, also anonymity is not only about tracking. I am much more anonym on discord because if discord would collect data then they'd only share it anonymized. No normal person will ever see any information of mine, especially not my IP.
I requested a gpdr data export a while ago. What they collect is:
- Your chats (obviously, because how else should they show them to you
- Your general user profile (Name, Servers, Friends, ...)
- Almost all your actions on discord (Talking, Joining Voice, Leaving voice)
The last one might sound like much, however it's fairly reasonable to collect this for both statistic and to prevent spamming or other malicious actions. However they do for example not store any advertisement data or collect what you say in voice. Their privacy policy also confirms that. So they do not have much more information about you than the average ts3 server has, considering that they don't have permanent chats & so on.

The last one is actually victim blaming. Not gonna explain you why this is garbage.

5)
I think if they can write "ITS TIME TO DITCH SKYPE AND TEAMSPEAK" and keep it that way since many years teamspeak deserves to write anything about them as well :P

They describe their goal, but they do not permanently flame against teamspeak and especially they are not telling lies or manipulating their community. Also they don't need to because their software is superior by any means.

6) Minimal CPU Usage: Its true TS consumes less RAM and less CPU usage as compard to Discord (not just the rendering bump) but overall. If u want i can share my TS and Discord system stats.
I've not mentioned many other comparison points because I think all of these things are piece of marketing strategies. Highlighted in red and green colors, at least they want to do some comparison even after not releasing a competitive client candidate since many years.
I'd rather say they are not that blatant like discord who asks everyone who visits their site to ditch skype and TS first try their product later lol

TS3 is using less RAM, however who cares. Almost every pc nowadays has enough ram to handle 20 discord instances and meanwhile watch youtube and listen to spotify. And the CPU performance is almost the same in idle or while talking, only the rendering of discord costs more.

I would love to see messaging system and channel based improvements too if i am gonna compare TS with anything else.

And ofc they should make the android(mobile) client(s) free of charge so more people can use it.

[/QUOTE]
I'd like to see ts3 come to an end so we can finally benefit from the modern features of alternatives

[Whittle]

Marketing is and always will be a subjective experience and so what one reader may disagree with, another may think is just fine.

I'd like to see ts3 come to an end so we can finally benefit from the modern features of discord. I'm annoyed of being held on bad software just because some people like you stick there for no reason.

Writing a mini-critique of marketing material about a software you don't like probably isn't the best thing to do if you're trying not get annoyed.

[numma_cway]

They should change their own status on encryption to "optional (voice) / never (file transfer)". For many ATHPs, this feature is even paid.

If TeamSpeak wants to emphasize privacy, they could just make it so that their privacy policy is "We neither save your data nor embed any external elements.". That's the privacy policy of YaTQA.

[Bituspy]

There are no people in voice because discord does not force everyone into voice all the time. If you wanna talk with someone then you'll either call the person private or tell them to join into a channel. That's exactly how friends and I do this. Also don't forget that many discords are just there to write, not to talk.

Are we discussing pros and cons about a VOIP server? Its main purpose is to serve as Voice over IP and not to chat around right? Why chat when u can talk, but yeah its necessary to chat when you are not in the same channel/server.
Global chat is nice when people are in offline mode or when u wish to share things to the whole community I am not denying that at all and i would love to see the same feature in TS5.

TS3 is using less RAM, however who cares. Almost every pc nowadays has enough ram to handle 20 discord instances and meanwhile watch youtube and listen to spotify. And the CPU performance is almost the same in idle or while talking, only the rendering of discord costs more.

Every PC has it, yeah sure but if we are discussing pros and cons then its a pro for TS and con for discord whether you like it or not

I'd like to see ts3 come to an end so we can finally benefit from the modern features of discord. I'm annoyed of being held on bad software just because some people like you stick there for no reason.

Lets be honest here....you're not here to compare the features or complain you want teamspeak to end. I am using TS since 2009 mate i know changes are for good but discord ain't that good to permanently move on it. You've moved on it so its good stop checking on people who are left out on teamspeak. I bet if you would have written the above 2 lines there wouldn't be any need to write the whole page to check the intentions of your post here :P

[floprott]

Marketing is and always will be a subjective experience and so what one reader may disagree with, another may think is just fine.

It's not like you could also do marketing without any manipulation or lies? Look at discord, they managed to do that. You don't need to lie if your product is better.

Are we discussing pros and cons about a VOIP server? Its main purpose is to serve as Voice over IP and not to chat around right? Why chat when u can talk, but yeah its necessary to chat when you are not in the same channel/server.
Global chat is nice when people are in offline mode or when u wish to share things to the whole community I am not denying that at all and i would love to see the same feature in TS5.

You just absolutely left your original argument and ignored everything I said. Also this is a pure strawman argument. I never said that the chat replaced the normal communication in voice, it just replaced the sitting in AFK channels. You don't see so many people in discord channels because they are either in a private call or because they are simply not there are the moment. On TS you always see many people but huger amounts are just AFK. That's the difference on Discord or Skype, if you're AFK, then you're not in voice.

Every PC has it, yeah sure but if we are discussing pros and cons then its a pro for TS and con for discord whether you like it or not

It's not. The memory usage might be higher and rendering will cost some cpu, but this small loss of resources which 99% have results in a huge gain of features. Thanks to the simplicity of HTML, CSS and JS the discord developers can create features much faster and in a much better usable interface. So 1% of the people will have a real disadvantage because of the increased resource requirements, while 99% profit. I don't think that's a point for teamspeak, where it's the exact opposite.

Lets be honest here....you're not here to compare the features or complain you want teamspeak to end. I am using TS since 2009 mate i know changes are for good but discord ain't that good to permanently move on it. You've moved on it so its good stop checking on people who are left out on teamspeak. I bet if you would have written the above 2 lines there wouldn't be any need to write the whole page to check the intentions of your post here :P

I think my original text about that wasn't really clear about my intention. The thing is, I don't care who holds the market, the problem with teamspeak for me is *how* they do it. It's just unacceptable to hold a market trough lying and manipulation. Both Skype and Discord do a fair competition, so there is no justification for teamspeak to manipulate people. They should either win fairly or give up.

[Patrick1164]

I'm sorry but this is just fucking hilarious, saying this is through lying and manipulation is like claiming you're a lawyer when you studied law in high school, You're obviously a Discord shill and I don't really understand why you're here in the first place, if you really believe they're misleading then contact their support. Their forum is for support only, if you have a real complaint go through the correct channels.

It's not like you could also do marketing without any manipulation or lies? Look at discord, they managed to do that. You don't need to lie if your product is better.

Nah, you just pay streamers $$$$$$$$$$$$ to promote your software.

[floprott]

I'm sorry but this is just fucking hilarious, saying this is through lying and manipulation is like claiming you're a lawyer when you studied law in high school, You're obviously a Discord shill and I don't really understand why you're here in the first place, if you really believe they're misleading then contact their support. Their forum is for support only, if you have a real complaint go through the correct channels.

Nah, you just pay streamers $$$$$$$$$$$$ to promote your software.

You don't need to study law in order to notice what's manipulation. Also I did not even view this from a law perspective, but from a psychological/moral one. I only mentioned that Skype/Discord could sue Teamspeak for some blank lies and that's really nothing you need to be an expert for. If you hurt businesses by doing false claims then it's obvious that you could sue them.

I already explained why I am writing here and obviously I don't write their support because they would just ignore it. You can only stop companies from doing bad things by law or by showing the bad things to their customers and hope they care. I'm doing the last one as I'm not a poltician.

Any proofs that Discord pays much cash to streamers? They might did that in the beginning (which is still morally absolutely fine), but at the moment they don't need any marketing because it happens automatically. Existing discord user tell their friends about it and those friends tell their friends about it and so on. That's a very cheap marketing technique, but at least it's not manipulative. It only works when people are really convinced from a product.

[Patrick1164]

You don't need to study law in order to notice what's manipulation. Also I did not even view this from a law perspective, but from a psychological/moral one. I only mentioned that Skype/Discord could sue Teamspeak for some blank lies and that's really nothing you need to be an expert for. If you hurt businesses by doing false claims then it's obvious that you could sue them.

I already explained why I am writing here and obviously I don't write their support because they would just ignore it. You can only stop companies from doing bad things by law or by showing the bad things to their customers and hope they care. I'm doing the last one as I'm not a poltician.

Any proofs that Discord pays much cash to streamers? They might did that in the beginning (which is still morally absolutely fine), but at the moment they don't need any marketing because it happens automatically. Existing discord user tell their friends about it and those friends tell their friends about it and so on. That's a very cheap marketing technique, but at least it's not manipulative. It only works when people are really convinced from a product.

1, Discord & Skype could not sue TeamSpeak for libel as they would have no case in this regards.

If you think Discord had grounds to sue TeamSpeak, what about Slack being pissed at discord for copying their exact layout. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/...t_all/cy15vrz/ (Known discord employee)

2. They did pay streamers to advertise in the start, which is hilarious from the start. An example is: https://twitter.com/discordapp/statu...52092773400576



You're clearly pretty salty to think that this is manipulation in any form and it's hilarious that you made an account to try bash TeamSpeak.

You can say I'm defending TeamSpeak if you want but I've called them out quite openly in the past but this is just blatantly moronic.

[floprott]

1, Discord & Skype could not sue TeamSpeak for libel as they would have no case in this regards.

If you think Discord had grounds to sue TeamSpeak, what about Slack being pissed at discord for copying their exact layout. https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/...t_all/cy15vrz/ (Known discord employee)

First of, it's not exactly the same. Also most parts of it were already seen somewhere before. And overall this in an inspiration in design, you can't compare that to blank lying (Spam Free, Military Grade Encryption)

2. They did pay streamers to advertise in the start, which is hilarious from the start. An example is: https://twitter.com/discordapp/statu...52092773400576

Where's the problem having partners? That's a win:win situation, compared to lying in marketing, which is only a win for the company.

You're clearly pretty salty to think that this is manipulation in any form and it's hilarious that you made an account to try bash TeamSpeak.

You can say I'm defending TeamSpeak if you want but I've called them out quite openly in the past but this is just blatantly moronic.

Not I think that. It's manipulation for a fact. They are telling wrong facts and ignoring important facts.