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Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

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Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#481

Post by goatinaboat »

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 always thought Microsoft would be a natural buyer given the tech stack and Microsoft's support for developers.

The heyday of SO is long over and all the serious Q+A takes place on GitHub, which MS already owns.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#482

Post by [deleted] »

toyg wrote: post #167
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack overflow is probably responsible for increasing global developer productivity by maybe ~1000x the acquisition price. In a sense it’s a tragedy of the commons.

Why must it be a tragedy? The owners were well-compensated. Shouldn't we celebrate instead the amazing result/effort ratio one can achieve these days with a basic website...? SO was notoriously and pragmatically simple.

[deleted]

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#483

Post by xtracto »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #454

some negative comments here. i believe when Jeff introduced Stack Overflow is because ExpertSExchange suck. this seem to be a perfect opportunity for people to build a Stack Overflow replacement. this 1.8B deal just validated the StackOverflow business is profitable and attractive.

I remember a couple of weeks ago someone showed their project which was a "personalized" version of StackOverflow: You hired one hour or so of a developer to help you solve an issue.

The problem I see with StackOverflow is monetization: They tried with Ads (which have slowly been rejected by society). They tried as a candidate sourcing service (I used them to hire a long time ago, and it didn't have good Signal to Noise ratio). Then they tried with "StackOverflow for work" which I think makes sense for very large companies (think Oracle, IBM or similar size) but not so much for SMEs.

I would love to see them test-drive a micro-transaction mode where they ask people viewing a Q&A page for a small fee (think $0.01) to view the responses, and they could even share the revenue with people who write accepted/updated answers. This could be an interesting use case for something like Neo, Nano, IOTA or Ethereum (once it goes PoS).

They could even do some kind of "diminishing return" model where the first person seeing an answer pays a bit more (say $0.10) and as more people see the q&a they pay less and less until it is practically free.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#484

Post by tootie »

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…

Microsoft or Salesforce. Most of the value over the past few years has shifted from general programming topics to platform-specific StackExchange communities.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#485

Post by stingraycharles »

philote wrote: post #463
johnchristopher wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have given up on participating on SO because more often than not I am told I don't have enough reputation to do something (I don't know if it's commenting or giving an answer or giving an upvote but there are some questions for which answers are wrong or need some updates and I can't participate. So I just don't by default. I think I can't upvote on some stack and I find this weird).

I can't downvote your comment here on HN, presumably because I don't have enough reputation. And HN doesn't even tell me.

I think you need 100 points in order to downvote. HN generally prefers to upvote good content rather than to downvote bad content.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#486

Post by polynomial »

polynomial wrote: post #164
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…

TBF, the notion of community at least started off as more than marketing speak or social justice trend chasing. Arguably, it is a substantive basis of our inter-networked connectedness, even if it was later assimilated by the same marketing machinery that also spits outs empty (but apparently effective) buzzwords.

will somebody smarter than me please explain why this was downvoted? tia

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#487

Post by picodguyo »

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."

Yep. At best this holds true for 12-18 months. The founders/execs play dumb in the interest of minimizing attrition.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#488

Post by joelbluminator »

Loveaway wrote: post #274
irrational wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically I was one of the first ones too but never really participated since I didn’t think the site would actually have lasting power. Never ask me to pick the winning horse. Same thing with Bitcoin. I knew about it from the first day, but never mined any since it was such a dumb idea. Face palm.

Mined about 100 on some old Radeon. Sold them at $30, because I thought they peaked. Trying not to think about that too much:)

Wow...crazy

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#489

Post by detaro »

stingraycharles wrote: post #485
philote wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't downvote your comment here on HN, presumably because I don't have enough reputation. And HN doesn't even tell me.

I think you need 100 points in order to downvote. HN generally prefers to upvote good content rather than to downvote bad content.

you need >500 points

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#490

Post by tootie »

macando wrote: post #92

Since switching almost completely to JavaScript, Node.js and React I noticed that my time spent on Stack Overflow dropped significantly. I found my answers in API docs and GitHub issues most of the time. I never created an account. Once I had listed most recent Redux and React questions, had an answer to one that was pretty tricky within one minute since posting and while I was typing out the answer in my editor some…

I think it's a virtuous cycle of modern development that popular SO questions make their into the official documents. And things people find super annoying just get fixed and disappear. I had some issues with a popular framework a few years back and got answered by the creator directly.
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