Gas is an anonymous social media app launched in August 2022 that targets American teenagers and is widely popular. The app has been number one in the App Store for several months, and founder Nikita Bier said in November (opens in new tab) that "one in three teens" in the US have installed the app, and in late December Gas had $6 million in sales and 10 million downloads, he revealed.

Discord liked what it saw and announced that it had acquired Gas in just five months:

"Today, we are pleased to announce that Discord has acquired Gas, a popular voting social app that allows friends to share compliments." A statement from Discord (opens in new tab) said.

"The huge success of Gas shows that the opportunity exists to create a playful yet meaningful place for young people, and the founders of Gas have a proven track record of creating exciting apps and experiences, and we are excited to take it to the next level with their team.

This part of the track record is quite interesting because it includes a warning to Discord: Gas shares much with an app called tbh that was developed by the same people before it was sold to Meta (then Facebook) for $100 million in 2017. Less than a year later, in July 2018, tbh shut down its service due to low user numbers.

Perhaps Facebook just killed the competition, or perhaps the management by tbh's company after the acquisition was terrible, or perhaps it was just the nature of its popularity among teenagers. What is popular now is not likely to remain so for long.

In any case, the similarities are striking. The app's name comes from the slang "gassing up," meaning to compliment someone, and a key feature of Gas is that users can participate in anonymous polls containing pre-written compliments about their peers; in Gas, only positive remarks are displayed; in Gas, users are able to vote for their peers by voting on their favorite ones; and in Gas, users are able to vote for their favorite ones by voting on their favorite ones.

Individuals who win the vote earn "flames," and the way to monetize users is with information: by paying a $6.99 subscription, users can unlock a "God Mode" where they can see hints of who voted for whom. Sounds like exactly what is needed in a high school environment!

"Gas is all about uplifting and empowering each other through positive affirmation," says Discord founder Jason Citron (opens in new tab)! It's something the Internet needs more of! I look forward (to) taking it to the next level together."

Gas will remain as an independent app and the team will join Discord. The chat service's momentum seems unstoppable, and it had no problem raising so much cash that it fought off a $12 billion acquisition from Microsoft in 2020: (opens new tab): "There is this big trend [of people] broadcasting wide open social media communication services to smaller, more intimate places [...]. We are a meaningful part of how it is evolving on the Internet."

Discord's 2022 turns out to be more about the rebirth of a modest forum (open in new tab), a trend that Gas certainly seems to be in line with that identified by Citron. (Ultimately, you know what this funding means: open in new tab).