With over 150 million active users as of 2022, Discord has exploded as the platform of choice for today‘s gamers, techies and other online communities to gather and chat.
But despite its massive growth in popularity, Discord has lacked native discovery tools to easily find people you already know or share common interests with. The platform has instead mostly relied on organic growth through shared server invitations.
However, there are still several effective techniques to track down a Discord user by their username or unique 4-digit discriminator tag.
As a professional full stack developer and open source contributor for over 5 years, I‘ll explain these lookup approaches in-depth, complete with expert advice and code examples.
We‘ll cover:
- How Discord structures its user identity model
- Growth stats showing Discord‘s network effects
- Limitations around searching by username or tag
- Directory lookup methods
- Reverse engineering solutions
- Privacy and security implications
- How to leverage connections
So if you want to learn how to connect with new or lost contacts on Discord, this comprehensive guide has you covered!
Dissecting Discord‘s Architecture for User Identity
To understand the challenges around looking up users, we first need to explore how Discord structures user identities under the hood.
Discord‘s backend was built on websockets using Node.js and React for real-time performance. User data gets saved to a PostgreSQL database cluster accessed by the API servers.
Some key identity model characteristics:
Usernames
When creating an account, a user picks any display name for their profile following these rules:
- 2-32 characters
- Letters, numbers and underscores
- Non-unique
So multiple users can have names like "JohnDoe" or "Kat_Gamer".
Usernames can also be changed at any time in Account Settings. So even if you find someone‘s name today, it could different tomorrow!
Tags
Every user also gets assigned a randomly generated 4-digit number called a "discriminator tag" appended to their name.
These tags go from 0000 to 9999 giving 10,000 possible combinations per username. It looks like:
JohnDoe#6829
Kat_Gamer#0053 Tags guarantee uniqueness and are consistent for that user. Even if Kat_Gamer changes her name to Gamer_Kat later, her tag would stay #0053.
User IDs
Internally, each account also has an 18-digit user ID stored as a Snowflake ID format in the database. This long string of numbers uniquely and permanently represents every user.
So while usernames can change anytime, the ID in the backend binds all profile and server data to the right person.
Here‘s a fake example:
382910990097303572These internal IDs stay fully hidden from users but understanding them provides insight into Discord engineering.
Analyzing Discord‘s Meteoritic Rise
Launched in 2015 focused on gaming, Discord hit its initial growth spurt during 2020‘s COVID lockdowns. With people stuck at home looking to connect online, the user base doubled from 100 million to over 200 million in 2020 as per official figures.
The growth has continued unabated. Here‘s a breakdown of some Discord monthly active user stats over the past 3 years based on media reports and developer platform updates:
| Date | MAU Count |
|---|---|
| Jan 2020 | 100 million |
| Dec 2020 | 200 million |
| June 2021 | 150 million |
| July 2022 | 150 million |
As a real-time chat service humans have flocked to as primary social hub during the pandemic, Discord‘s meteoric rise has spurred interest in connecting with pre-existing contacts or new friends on there.
Yet despite doubling to over 300 million registered profiles, finding even familiar names has only gotten harder as competition for cool usernames increases. That‘s what makes understanding Discord‘s identity model so valuable.
As blockchain startups like Solana looking to integrate social graphs into web3 show, identity portability has become a growing point of interest as our digital lives splinter across apps.
Limitations Around Username and Tag Lookup
Now that we‘ve covered the key architectural elements of Discord IDs, where does that leave us for actually finding someone by partial info?
Unfortunately Discord has provided very limited native tools thus far for account search or directory lookup given restrictions around usernames and tags.
Searching by Username
Usernames being non-unique and mutable means there‘s no feasible way to lookup say "JohnDoe" and find the right person out of potentially infinite choices.
Discord likely made this design choice early on to provide users creative freedom in changing names rather than permanency.
But that means no native search exists for just names, unlike say Twitter handles or YouTube channels that get locked to identities.
Searching by Tag
Tags were generated to provide uniqueness. But with 10,000 combinations per name, searching #6829 by itself is still an immense haystack.
The only guarantee is no two people can have that exact tag, but it‘s unlikely you‘d guess the associated name.
So tagging alone yields very limited lookup capability natively on Discord. External solutions use data scraping to make associations.
These constraints explain the common advice to check shared servers when attempting to find someone with limited identity clues.
Now let‘s explore workaround methods that still enable successful lookups!
Utilizing Directory Services for Username Lookup
To address the identity search challenge, various external services have popped up over the years offering limited Discord user directories utilizing different data sources.
I‘ll analyze the three main options that let you search by username:
Online Database Scrapers
Some lookup sites like discord.id, yagpdb.xyz and discord.services scrape public information to build searchable indexes.
They crawl community forums and public profile sources to extract any usernames and tags shared by users. These get aggregated into a database you can query.
For example searching "JohnDoe":
// Pseudocode for lookup by name
lookupUserInAllPublicRecords("JohnDoe");
Output:
[
{
"name": "JohnDoe",
"tag": "#6829"
},
{
"name": "JohnDoe",
"tag": "#1234"
}
]The main downside is their coverage is limited only to public instances of a username they could access. So no guarantee of finding a match.
Social Graph Integrations
Some larger bot platforms like disboard.org also integrate their own social graphs based on users interacting with features across millions of servers.
So if JohnDoe used a poll bot command for example, that action could associate the name and tag identity behind the scenes:
// Pseudocode for social graph lookup
let pollBotCommand = {
user: "JohnDoe#6829"
}
lookupUserByUserName(pollBotCommand.user.split("#")[0])
// Returns IDOf course this again depends on that user actively engaging with that specific bot codebase to be discoverable.
User Reported Directories
A few manually crowdsourced directories like discord.st also exist where people directly submit their own usernames and tags publicly to aid searchability.
The scale of these relies fully on user participation so can be limited. But provides another option for cases where a name and tag were intentionally shared somewhere findable.
In summary, external lookup sites provide useful search capabilities, but suffer from coverage gaps compared to internal data stores. Their public scraped info also raises some privacy considerations.
Leveraging Reverse Lookup to Find Tags
Services that aggregate identity info as described above focus primarily on starting with a known username string.
But a few innovative bots have managed to introduce some limited reverse search capabilities too using tag clues.
By inserting their code into tons of public servers, they can scan millions of user IDs behind the scenes and associate names to tags.
For example using the YAGPDB reverse tag search:
// Pseudocode for reverse tag lookup
let scannedUserIDs = [
{
"name": "JohnDoe",
"tag": "#6829",
"id": "38291099009730357"
},
// Millions more rows
]
function lookupUserByTag(searchTag) {
let matchedUsers = [];
// Filter by tag
scannedUserIDs.filter(user => {
if (user.tag == searchTag) {
matchedUsers.push(user);
}
})
return matchedUsers; // Name and ID
}
lookupUserByTag("#6829");
// Returns
{ "name": "JohnDoe", "id": "38291099009730357"}However, since their scan coverage is limited, reverse searches are still unpredictable. But provide another option combining automated large scale aggregation of identities behind the scenes.
Now that we‘ve covered the programmatic solutions, let‘s explore some manual but effective people finding techniques.
Leveraging Shared Server Connections
The most reliable way to discover Discord contacts remains good old fashioned community connections!
Discord‘s network effects manifest where new users get introduced via invitation links to servers related to their interests.
Once on such servers, organic conversations yield friendships and cooperation, anchoring identities to groups.
So if you and JohnDoe both play Call of Duty Mobile and are on same guild‘s Discord, you likely chat regularly and can simply view server member details or ask directly for his full ID to connect further.
No programming needed! This allows building relationships first, then linking up cross-server after trust develops.
Server-focused linking also ensures contacts share genuine common interests vs blind mass invites. The context and relevance increases engagement likelihood rather than random adds.
Comparing Identity Control Across Social Apps
To understand the unique identity portability challenges facing Discord, it warrants exploring how other leading social platforms handle usernames and mutable profiles.
Long the staple of social graphs online, Facebook standardized real identity policies by requiring official names on accounts tied to single user control.
- Usernames: Real full names
- Changeability: Not possible
- Searchability: Full text search of names
This allowed reliable lookups but some privacy tradeoffs. Their Graph API however enables apps to integrate social functionality.
Originally allowing pseudonyms, Twitter later locked handles to valid accounts allowing search even amidst name changes.
- Usernames: @handles
- Changeability: Display names can change
- Searchability: By permanent @handles
Their API opened the tweet firehose to new products.
Discord
Discord conversely valued anonymity and creative expression over locking identity or sharing data.
- Usernames: User created names
- Changeability: Fully mutable names
- Searchability: None natively
Developers can only access data from servers where they explicitly added bots.
This comparison shows the intentional tradeoffs Discord made providing users control. The cost was discoverability.
Understanding these contrasts helps guide strategies to responsibly expanding connections while respecting user expectations.
Security and Privacy Considerations
I want to provide a transparent note around privacy implications of some techniques mentioned for finding users against their wishes or saving their data.
Discord provides settings allowing people to fully disable friend requests or remain anonymous on public servers. So forcing connections on unwilling participants via intrusive scraping should be avoided.
Similarly services promising access to "leaked" databases likely violate terms of service and involve ethical consent considerations.
My recommendations focus instead on fully public and voluntary channels protected by Discord‘s existing security model.
That said, even VKontakte with over 300 million profiles saw user breaches in the past. So no system prevents all risks of incidents given enough scale and bad actors.
By responsibly documenting identity models as done here however, educational awareness improves around securing your personal data and avoiding platforms putting it at undue risk in the first place!
Leveraging Your Network Professionally on Discord
While much talk around Discord focuses on gaming communities, the platform has evolved into a mainstream hub for professional networking similar to Slack or Teams.
Servers dedicated to industries like design, development and countless others host public video chats for knowledge exchange and opportunities.
So whether connecting around hobbies for fun or career skills for success, Maximizing your coherent identity and relationships on Discord amplifies positive outcomes in both worlds!
Wrapping Up
Despite limitations around finding existing contacts on Discord directly, this guide has hopefully provided you a comprehensive understanding of workable solutions using code as well useful tips interacting via engaging server communities.
The key takeaways around safely expanding your social graph across this next-generation chat platform include:
- Usernames remain non-unique but mutable
- Tags guarantee identity uniqueness
- External services aggregate public data for search
- Shared server members often know each other
- Building connections contextually maintains relevance
While still going through some standardization growing pains, Discord‘s passionate early user base hints that their winning formula looks here to stay.
So get in early and leverage these tips to turn nebulous online names into meaningful relationships! The future USS Discord has set sail – make sure you‘re on board 