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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

wsj.com

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#521

Post by horsemans »

karmicthreat wrote: post #317

I remember back in the day Jeff or Joel came on the somethingawful forums and started talking about their idea. They were resoundly trolled about how horrible their site idea is. Why would we want un-certified randos on the internet giving people advice? Stack Overflow succeeded and SA is just kind of limping along. Though maybe now that Lowtax is gone it can just kind of maintain.

You're confusing Joel/StackOverflow for Jeff Atwood, who posted on the forums while designing Discourse.

Atwood was lambasted for not understanding the SA forums culture before making assertions about it, and for being seen as wanting to ignore the necessary role that human moderation plays in maintaining strong communities.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#522

Post by nickysielicki »

bhandziuk wrote: post #440
usrusr wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all those years of being merely a reader I felt like transitioning from reader to contributor recently and the amount of roadblocks you get at reputation one is simply too much. There's an answer you think could become more useful with your comment warning of a pitfall to be aware of? Sorry kid, no can do, you need to grind away with top level answers before you can spread you finite wisdom in the small print.…

Just positively edit a few questions. You'll get rep for that. https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges Questions by new users usually need a lot of editing so there is no shortage of things which need editing. You'll get 15 rep after 7 approved edits. Things will accelerate from there.

For what? I've already built up the internal momentum to go out of my way to fix someone being wrong about something trivial on the internet, and now you're telling me I need to invest my time on even more trivial pedantic bullshit (like editing wording on an accepted answer) just to gain the privilege to make a top level answer?

You'd think that with such strict rules, StackOverflow would have very high quality questions and very high quality answers. But it actually doesn't. One aspect of being a good developer is catching a stackoverflow answer in a mistake and being capable of rejudging the rest of the answer section as a result (ie: scrolling further down and finding the correct answer that has zero upvotes).

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#523

Post by skohan »

dested wrote: post #11

I always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers. Unrelated story, I have a day one Stack Overflow account. I don't remember how I found it but I'm sure it was posted on digg or slashdot or something at the time. I had a lot of posts in the first few years about some generally broad concepts, and completely inactive since. In spite of this, I am in the to…

I'm actually glad MS would not also own SO. Github has been basically fine under MS ownership so far, but it seems like we're headed into a period of massive corporate consolidation, and I'd be happy if not all the developer tools are controlled by one interested party

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#524

Post by deepfriedrice »

polynomial wrote: post #479
TenJack wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woh, how did this lead to his demise?

1. He originally submitted the question using his real name before quickly changing his user name to "frosty." Oops, too late. 2. Forensic testimony in the complaint asserted Silk Road used this method and in fact used code identical to that in the answer. 3. Silk Road server encryption was signed with Frosty@Frosty. #2 and #3 were evidentiary, but #1 is what tied everything to a real person's name.

How did they find out he originally posted under his real name? They must have known that was his profile, and then SO handed over the data proving it?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#525

Post by tibbydudeza »

swyx wrote: post #504
numair wrote: post #28

This is absolutely phenomenal. Naspers/Prosus are some of the savviest and most forward-thinking players in tech investment — would you have been smart enough to give Tencent all that money, way back when? And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. This is much more interesting than a monopolist like Microsoft buying SO, and I’d be keen to see what the growth strategy is…

can you substantiate more here.. it reads like they made one good bet on Tencent and you suddently regard them as "the savviest and most forward-thinking players in tech investment ". have you looked at their other bets?

They invested in takealot.com which is the goto online site for non-food in South Africa.

Revenue in 2020 was US$238-million up by 41% the previous year no doubt due to the lockdown.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#526

Post by tigger0jk »

ejb999 wrote: post #519

Top 0.5% SO'er here, but the funniest thing that I have had happen to me - and it has happened more than once - is I google for an answer to a programming problem I am having, get brought to stack overflow, and find the accepted answer to the question is one i myself wrote years before.

Smaller contributor here, so when I googled for a specific flash log location it was my own EDIT to an existing answer that I needed.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#527

Post by burlesona »

ejb999 wrote: post #519

Top 0.5% SO'er here, but the funniest thing that I have had happen to me - and it has happened more than once - is I google for an answer to a programming problem I am having, get brought to stack overflow, and find the accepted answer to the question is one i myself wrote years before.

Yeah this has happened to me at least a few times as well, it always makes me laugh :)

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#528

Post by shagie »

polynomial wrote: post #472
sjclemmy wrote: post #346

Fun fact and one of my dinner party anecdotes; I have the accepted answer for one of Ross Ulbricht’s (Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts) SO questions that got him busted. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9563675/destroying-a-spe...

Where did his 3,675 reputation come from? He only asked 2 questions and has a small number of badges.

You keep reputation on sufficiently old, sufficiently voted posts even if they are deleted.

Presumably, there are also deleted questions or answers that were up voted.

Additionally, there was a "up votes on questions are also worth 10 points" recently (past few years).

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#529

Post by robertlagrant »

crispyambulance wrote: post #403
zaptrem wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to build out the platform, difficult to build out the knowledge base (especially since so many areas have already been covered on SO)

SO is OK for very narrow questions that have concrete definitive answers. Unfortunately, SO's self-appointed police force will shut people down for any deviation from "the rules" (as they interpret them), or sometimes for no reason at all. Github issues, on the other hand, seems to be receptive to open-ended "why" questions which would be smacked down hard on SO. Github has a higher barrier to entry. You have to know…

One's about discussions; the other isn't.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#530

Post by xenadu02 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #347
sillysaurusx wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. But I agree with you overall. I'm a bit nervous too. Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. EDIT: In the other announcement post ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ... ): Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overfl…

>> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I've been a part of a couple of these. This statement is somewhere on the spectrum of absolutely naive to willfully disingenuous. "Someone just paid 2 billion dollars to buy us, but they're not going to change anything, exert any influence or expect payback beyond what we've already been doing."

While somewhat rare there are holding companies like Jonas Software that buy lots of smaller software companies in various markets then effectively let each subsidiary run without too much interference. Their philosophy seems to be own most or all of the competitors in a vertical market, sell the software for a reasonable (read: non-Oracle) price with ongoing maintenance, and collect the cash. I only know about them because a relative was Director of Engineering at the time they were acquired and is now CEO.

They don't expect any massive changes in revenue with the companies they acquire. They're willing to hire and invest in revamping/improving their products. Their goal is stable revenue by making customers happy enough to keep paying the maintenance.

They seem to be doing OK with that business model.

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