Dcard

30-Second Overview

In 2011, a sophomore in the Information Management Department at National Taiwan University (NTU) named Lin Yu-chin (online handle: Kytu), feeling that "you still end up not knowing anyone, even after entering university," built the first version of Dcard on his dormitory connection. Fourteen years later, that website has more than 11 million members and 22 million unique monthly visitors, making it the second-most-used social platform among Taiwanese aged 18 to 24 (behind only Instagram).¹ It is also currently the largest native social platform by traffic in Taiwan — but simultaneously, nobody can be certain whether its peak was now or has already passed.

A Kid from Tainan Heads North, Then Builds a Website

Lin Yu-chin is from Tainan.

By his own account, as a child he flipped through a book and saw Bill Gates and thought entrepreneurship was cool. When preparing college applications, he deliberately avoided biology to avoid staying in Tainan for medical school, got into NTU's Information Management Department, and headed north alone. In his freshman year he learned HTML and started building websites for his department; word spread around NTU that "this person can build websites," and he began taking client work to earn living expenses — so much that he subcontracted overflow to junior students.²

In his sophomore year, he noticed that university students, despite living in the same dormitory building and campus, had difficulty meeting new people due to the constraints of their social circles. So he built the first version of Dcard. "D" stands for Destiny — the concept being that perhaps your encounter with a stranger was fated.³

Midnight, Draw a Card

The feature that originally made Dcard go viral was not the forums — it was card drawing.

The rules were simple: after verifying with your school email to confirm you were genuinely a university student, every night at midnight the system would match one university student from a different school to you. You had 24 hours to decide whether to send a friend request; if the other person also accepted, you became friends and could start chatting. After 24 hours, the chance vanished.

This mechanism was designed to be a little romantic and a little merciless — you knew this person existed, but you might not know who they were; and you only had one chance per day. At the time, students at universities across Taiwan spontaneously started petitions on Dcard, asking for their schools to be added to the list of schools eligible to be matched.⁴

Verification was also a distinguishing feature: only institutional university email addresses were accepted, and there was manual review. This barrier kept early Dcard's community purity high — everyone knew the person on the other side was at least a university student, not a bot or unknown interloper.

Anonymous, But Not Completely

Dcard's anonymity design has a distinctive character.

When posting, you can choose to display "Some University" or "Some University, Some Department" rather than your real name. This made people willing to share genuine thoughts — relationship problems, academic pressure, frustration with family, views on social events — because you know the other person only knows what school you're from, not who you are.

But this design also created problems. Because you couldn't block a specific school account (in the past you could only see the school and department, not identify the individual), someone could keep commenting under your posts with the same identity in ways you found unpleasant — and you had no way to stop them.⁵

The underlying logic of Dcard is: anonymity must have limits. Unlike message boards that don't verify identity at all, Dcard requires real-name verification before you can use it — only the display is a school or professional identity rather than a real name. For personal attacks or false accusations, the platform says it responds quickly. Lin Yu-chin has said: "Many platforms that went anonymous later died, because without verification behind it, you don't have to be accountable for what you say."⁶

From Campus Forum to the Main Stage for Young Taiwan

In 2015, Lin Yu-chin established "Dcard Technology Co., Ltd.," turning Dcard from a student project into a formal company.

In 2020, 29-year-old Lin Yu-chin was named to Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 in the Consumer Technology category. At the time, Forbes called Dcard "the most influential social platform among Taiwan's young population."⁷

In 2021, Dcard opened to non-university students — verification now only required an ID document plus a phone number. This decision significantly expanded Dcard's audience, but also led some veteran users to lament that "that feeling of belonging only to university students has disappeared."

In 2024, Dcard announced that its member count had broken 10 million and monthly unique visitors exceeded 22 million, formally positioning itself at its "Generation-D Trend Launch" as an observer of consumer trends among Taiwan's younger generation. A survey by the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC) under the Institute for Information Industry showed that 45.9% of Taiwanese internet users aged 18 to 24 regularly use Dcard — the highest of any age group.⁸

Setbacks Abroad: Japan, Malaysia, and Only Hong Kong and Macau Left

Dcard had ambitions beyond Taiwan.

In 2018 it first entered Hong Kong and Macau. In 2021, it launched in Japan under the "Dtto" brand, at one point getting more than 250 Japanese universities and colleges to join — but failing to achieve sustainable growth. In 2023, it tried Malaysia (Dcard MY).

On July 30, 2025, Dcard announced the simultaneous termination of its Japan and Malaysia community services, leaving only Hong Kong and Macau as overseas markets. Officially, the company said it would now focus on its core Taiwan market and plans to actively explore AI technology applications.⁹

Two attempts into Japan and one retreat is worth noting. An anonymous community culture that grew naturally in Taiwan, when copied into another market with different language and cultural habits, proved far more difficult than imagined.

Dcard in 2026: An AI Agent Company

Lin Yu-chin began transforming Dcard into what he calls an "AI agent company" in 2025.

His approach was to first announce internal cybersecurity usage guidelines to eliminate employee concerns about data leakage, then announce "unlimited subsidy" for AI tool subscriptions — every engineer's monthly AI tool costs are paid directly by the company. By early 2026, he said 90% of employees had already transitioned from "executors" to "commanders directing AI." In his own mornings, he sits before a "AI war room" of five or six screens.¹⁰

This is a social platform's choice in responding to traffic competition and business model pressure — not by dramatically expanding headcount, but by multiplying each person's output through AI. Whether it will succeed is something only time, which has only just begun in 2026, can tell.

"Dcard Is Dead" — A Question That Reappears Every Two Years

Ever since Dcard began letting non-university students join, increasing advertising, and launching creator programs, there has been a persistent voice saying "Dcard isn't the Dcard it used to be."

This is the inevitable dilemma every social platform faces: to survive you must commercialize, to commercialize you must necessarily change the community feel, and once the community feel changes, the most influential early users start leaving and then pronounce you dead. Facebook went through it. Instagram went through it. Someone announces "PTT is dead" every few years.

Whether Dcard's traffic has declined, and how steep the decline has been, remains a contested topic in Taiwan's tech circles between 2025 and 2026. Some creators say their reach is down to 30%; official numbers show monthly visitors still at the tens-of-millions level. These two things are not necessarily contradictory: overall traffic may still be high, but the reach of individually influential creators may have fallen sharply.¹¹

Whatever the answer, the fact that Dcard is still alive in Taiwan — for a community that grew out of a student dormitory project — is itself quite an achievement.

Further Reading

• Dcard Official Newsroom — Company milestones and latest developments
• Lin Yu-chin Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Profile (Meet Startups, 2020) — Interview on entrepreneurship journey after nearly 10 years
• Dcard Evolves Into AI Agent Company (CommonWealth Magazine, 2026) — Lin Yu-chin on Dcard's AI transformation in real time
• Dcard Terminates Japan and Malaysia Services (Business Next, 2025) — Full report on the overseas expansion retreat