I hadn't heard of Prosus or Naspers before this. Apparently Naspers owns 31.2% of Tencent. Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned.
Indeed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers is a fascinating read.
Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#42This 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…
They might have first class access to data that enables a powerful shift in integrated development.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#43I 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…
It's surprising what sorts of things people will buy for prestige - that might be worth a good deal of money for resale when you're looking to retire.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t want to seem like a jerk saying this, because I’ve put effort into supporting the site and helping with moderation, I know it’s all very challenging and difficult, but: I think stack overflow has been dead for a while. Maybe you and I wanted different things from it and you still find it useful, but I haven’t really enjoyed it for many years. I loved it over a decade ago, these days I generally avoid it. I wa…
The StackOverflow community has always been extremely abrasive. People will constantly be rewriting or deleting your questions or leaving unhelpful comments complaining about something silly like the formatting. With that said, it's still extremely useful. It makes my job easier and saves me a ton of time.
Jeff Atwood explained this behavior as stemming from the fact that when you work with a computer all day, you kind of become one.
Source: https://youtu.be/KZkYSSE8HHI
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#45I 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 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.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#46I 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…
Same for me. Day 1. I'm user 25 on the site as I listened to the podcast about them making it. Just for answering a few questions early I'm in the top 0.76% overall.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#47I 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…
> In spite of this, I am in the top 7% of accounts on the site, which is a nice reminder on the power of compound interest!
I'm also in the top 7%. That's down from 12% or so from five years ago. However, I haven't gained many points during the same interval. That leads me to believe it's not about compound interest but new users joining.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#48You had a good run Stack Overflow - sad to see it die this way (because we know it all will)
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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#49Has anyone found any other Q/A sites similar to Stack overflow or what it used to be? My experience with Stack overflow from early 2010s to now, is that it used to be an amazing, "must-have" site. Always the #1 result on Google. I used it for basic web and iOS dev (remember Objective-C) and it had better documentation than most of the official docs. But now the quality of the questions and answers is worse, official…
The problem with StackOverflow or any "community-driven" effort is that every single community is driven by those who dedicate the most time to driving the community.
In the beginning, this isn't largely a problem because the owners of the site can manage the load. Then as the site gets marginally bigger, you can trust on volunteers who have demonstrated expertise or something.
But eventually, skilled people will get busy. Owners/developers will need to manage the business/code of the thing. Your expert volunteers will have jobs and obligations to fulfill. Between them, there won't be enough manhours to manage the community.
The worst thing to do is to put it in the hands of those who have dedicated the most time to the community. Why? Because there's a reason they have all that time to dedicate to the community. And hardly any of them are good. But that's what most places do. And then they essentially become places of pointless bickering and mindless politicking. Basically digital HOAs (to reference a recent article posted here).
The people responsible for managing the community need to be compensated for doing exactly that and they need to be either trained or vetted to do so. Self-selection in this regard is probably one of the worst ways to go about it.
Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B
#50Not bad for one NT machine.