I have been interested in starting a hobby project that could one day maybe become something more.

I've been considering a Discord alternative as 1 possibility of a project and to do a few things differently.

MS Teams and Slack still seem more business oriented still. I have heard of Revolt but it feels like it's going just direct Discord Alternative, and not trying to change it up too much, at least not yet.

What features would you consider a worthwhile differentiator instead of doing 'more of the same' that discord wouldn't likely ever do?

Obviously, aside from all the standard-esque things from text to voice, etc..

The few features that could make a discord alt more compelling of a platform.

1. More public facing community features (Don't be a blackhole of information). e.g. Allow public facing announcements/channels to be viewable without an account on the web. Some game companies use Discord to share announcements/patch notes but having to 'have an account, join a server, to view patch notes'. This blackhole of information just feels challenging for no good reason.

2. Allow a few more 'advanced users' type scenarios, even if it results in inconsistent or degraded user experiences. e.g. Allow P2P video screen sharing without needing to go thru middle re-broadcast. I know this doesn't scale with multiple consumers but with 1-2 proper users it be allowable. Saves a lot of upfront server $.

3. Support Channel/Chat aggregation (mostly cosmetic). Have a single view for quickly going between channels/private messages. Without having to go to each individual server first.

# Differentation

What features would you consider a worthwhile differentiator instead of doing 'more of the same' that discord is ever likely to do?

Also, any recommendations on technologies or frameworks to help me jumpstart? I have my professional strengths, but would rather stay open minded to all suggestions.