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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

#191

Post by klohto »

mssundaram wrote: post #174
croes wrote: post #115

"The group’s expansion into internet platforms began in the 1990s' spanning online consumer services, including: E-commerce - including its subsidiary, OLX (100%) Takealot.com (96%) Fintech - including its subsidiary, PayU (98.8%) Food delivery - including its subsidiary and associates, iFood (54.8%), Delivery Hero (22.3%) and Swiggy (38.8%) Etail - including its subsidiary, eMag (80.1%) Travel - including its associ…

Interesting. I've hardly heard of any of those companies - are they mostly non-US?

Definitely eastern europe / asia focused

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#192

Post by pavel_lishin »

rossdavidh wrote: post #75
eric_b wrote: post #64

I find parallels between Stack Overflow and Mozilla. Both started with fairly focused products that were best in class. The user base grew and the network effect multiplied. Both were started and largely staffed by engineers. Then both companies started focusing on "bigger", more ambiguous goals. Their about pages are riddled with the latest marketing-speak: Authentically empowering dignity, community, and inclusivit…

While I agree that it is annoying whenever one reads something put out by the actual SO people, I notice that (thus far) if I simply ignore that and go there to look up the answers to questions (and very occasionally ask or answer them), it still works fine. As long as the new owner doesn't make it "pay to see", I can probably ignore them. There is, of course, no guarantee in this. But, while I find what I hear about…

> As long as the new owner doesn't make it "pay to see", I can probably ignore them.

There was a very similar site about a decade ago, that would absolutely dominate in the Google search results - but of course, the answers were behind a paywall. Today, I don't even remember what their domain was called.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#193

Post by mathgenius »

linsomniac wrote: post #147

I ended up losing access to my ancient account (it was using the OpenID providers that they don't even support anymore and the provider I used isn't around). I had gone fairly inactive, but recently wanted to contribute some content. This was on the DIY stackoverflow, there's a fairly common problem on my stove, but an easy, low/no cost fix, it's just very involved. The DIY SO had a good discussion of the problem. To…

Glad to hear I'm not the only one that lost their S.O. account because they decided to try the amazing sounding OpenID.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#194

Post by iSnow »

jrockway wrote: post #45
caturopath wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played Stack Overflow years ago and have a ~0.3% ranked account, despite not really posting in years. It's amazing how little the ranking seems to have changed in the last 10 years, wavering around in the top half percent whenever I've peeked. I don't know whether the number is dishonest, or whether the new stars and new signups just happen to hold it in status, never sending it to 0.03% or 3%.

Same. I think what happened is that the early users answered all the most frequently occurring questions, and the questions honestly haven't changed much. I think my most popular answer is like how to diff with git. People are using git even more than they were when SO started, so it gets upvoted regularly.

There really should be some karma decay system to prevent early users hogging 5-figure reputation. I didn't do much there in the last 5y but I am still way up in reputation.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#195

Post by switch007 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #184

From their blog post: > It allows us to continue to operate as an independent company with our current team and with the backing of a global technology powerhouse. Sure, sure.

Indeed. That statement might be true for a short period of time as part of a transitional plan.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#196

Post by sangnoir »

bidirectional wrote: post #175
croes wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that old scammer trick? Pick 512 wealthy people, pick a stock, write half of the the people the stock will rise, the other half the stock will fall. Wait for the real development, dump the addresses of the losers, pick a new stock and start again. Write one half stock will rise, other half, stock will fall. Repeat until only one address is left. Now give him the opportunity of an large investment. You have s…

And how does this apply to modern investment funds who have to regularly provide client reports and make disclosures?

Take 512 investment funds, in one year half of them make a profit, half of them will make losses. Drop the ones that had losses, the next year half will make profits, the other half will suffer losses. Repeat until one fund is left: "Invest in us - we are market experts who had no losses for the past 9 consecutive years!"

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#197

Post by SanFranManDan »

bidirectional wrote: post #171
ttul wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly it’s random chance. The reality of investing is that it’s mostly down to chance. Take an equally skilled set of investors and give them the same market access and some will do exceptionally well.

This does not stand up to scrutiny at all, for any kind of investing. There have not been so many VC/hedge/PE funds in history that the top ones would arise through chance.

I mean you can get ten thousand monkeys throwing darts at a board full of companies as an investment strategy, and a handful of those monkeys will be top performers with excellent returns.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#198

Post by iSnow »

mssundaram wrote: post #174
croes wrote: post #115

"The group’s expansion into internet platforms began in the 1990s' spanning online consumer services, including: E-commerce - including its subsidiary, OLX (100%) Takealot.com (96%) Fintech - including its subsidiary, PayU (98.8%) Food delivery - including its subsidiary and associates, iFood (54.8%), Delivery Hero (22.3%) and Swiggy (38.8%) Etail - including its subsidiary, eMag (80.1%) Travel - including its associ…

Interesting. I've hardly heard of any of those companies - are they mostly non-US?

Delivery hero is pretty big in Germany and other EU countries.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#199

Post by arp242 »

rambambram wrote: post #69
canadianfella wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sad to see it die this way (because we know it all will) Why?

Not OP, but my guess is that it's not going to take long before there's a paywall of some sort. Bye bye free-'n'-easy programming answers. I don't ask questions there that much, but it is and has been extremely helpful for me.

The entire reason Stack Overflow is a success to start with is because it's not paywalled; it was literally founded as a response to Experts Exchange's paywall, and outgrew it in no-time. Paywalling the content would demonstrate a spectacular lack of insight, althouh that's not unheard of I would be surprised if they ended up paywalling it.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#200

Post by actuator »

bronson wrote: post #168
tomp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m dying to have that feature again. I just want to downvote/remove W3Cschools and upvote MDN.

You'd probably also downvote all the pay-for-placement results on Google's search page now. That would lead to some difficult questions.

You mean ads? I don't think search results themselves are altered based on payments.
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