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A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

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Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#51

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

cletus wrote: post #29

I'm still seeing no evidence of success or traction beyond the original Stackoverflow. I'm kinda curious what their burn rate is. I think there are 20 odd employees now, not all of them engineers. That'll consume $2-3 million a year. One hopes they're simply stockpiling cash while valuations are good. I'm kinda curious what valuation they got. I haven't seen anything about that anywhere.

I hang out on the Electronics & Robotics board and even in the few months I've been there, growth is noticeable.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#52

Post by lylejohnson »

marcamillion wrote: post #40

So just to be clear, the surprise ending is that they raised another round ? I am not trolling, btw.

Given that he begins that paragraph (where he discusses the new investors) with, "Now the surprise ending..." I'd say you're correct.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#53

Post by lylejohnson »

astrodust wrote: post #8
r00fus wrote: post #4

As cool as naming your site after a class of software bug, I think Stack Exchange is more descriptive of the whole initiative, and it rolls off the tongue more easily. Good move, and keep up the good content (now that Google has woken back up and is indexing them properly!)

Future competitors: Null Pointer, General Failure, Segmentation Fault.

There used to be a humor site named SegFault (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segfault_(website)) but it apparently died back in 2001.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#54

Post by pnathan »

cletus wrote: post #29

I'm still seeing no evidence of success or traction beyond the original Stackoverflow. I'm kinda curious what their burn rate is. I think there are 20 odd employees now, not all of them engineers. That'll consume $2-3 million a year. One hopes they're simply stockpiling cash while valuations are good. I'm kinda curious what valuation they got. I haven't seen anything about that anywhere.

I use SO regularly. I am not sure where they plan to make their money. I see ads, but I would be surprised if that covers the costs of the labor (I'd love to be surprised here).

I'm enjoying using it, and I would hate to see it fall over due to overexpansion/lack of cash flow.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#55

Post by jswinghammer »

logicalmind wrote: post #50
cletus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This response confuses me. The linked comment is dismissive and, in hindsight, ludicrous, saying that SO won't be around in a year (in 2008). The only reasonable conclusion to reach from this is that your response is a not-so-subtle derision of my statement, basically claiming it is just as ludicrous. Or am I reading this wrong? If not, this confuses me for several reasons: 1. It's very un-HN to be so snarky, even pe…

My interpretation is that he is going to use your comment, like the one he linked to, as motivation to prove you wrong. Maybe your comment will be printed out and put onto the wall of the SE office.

Considering he's a fairly active user on stackoverflow it seems like kind of a silly thing to do.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#56

Post by jerf »

NickPollard wrote: post #26
astrodust wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future competitors: Null Pointer, General Failure, Segmentation Fault.

I can't help but feel there'd be something ironic about trying to resolve www.nullpointer.com.

Did you try it?

Null pointer fail on that page, incidentally; the graphic at the top is actually a pointer to null, which isn't the same thing.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#57

Post by city41 »

br1 wrote: post #27

The partition of stack exchange into n different sites is sad. Tags should be able to impose order at least in the IT questions. The current situation heightens the artificial boundaries between programmers, users and sys admins.

I agree. I think the recent advent of programmers.stackexchange has just caused stackoverflow to get that much more segmented and broken apart.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#58

Post by AgentConundrum »

brown9-2 wrote: post #43
spolsky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you cletus; I needed a link to match this one. http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=2724411#xx2724411... The burn rate is very low. The valuation is private.

Are there multiple meanings of "burn rate" at play here? I can't imagine how paying 20 people fulltime salaries is anything approaching "low" - as in under $1 or 2 million. Of course "low" is a relative term, so it all depends on what the number is you are comparing it against...

I can't imagine how paying 20 people fulltime salaries is anything approaching "low"

Expense != Burn Rate

A burn rate is just negative cash flow. It's just the negative value found on the end of your income statement.

You're only considering salary. They're also bringing in money from their careers offering and their ads. Also, Amazon links get auto-converted into an affiliate link. On a site that gets as many pageviews as they do, these would be not insubstantial revenues, which reduces their burn rate.

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#59

Post by michaelbuckbee »

nikcub wrote: post #22

I wish more companies would write simple and clear blog post announcements like this one. The transparency is also refreshing given that corpspeak in company communications is making a comeback (see AOL and Yahoo). You don't need books and consultants on social media marketing, you just need a bit of personality and to treat your audience and community as real people. (this blog does fail at something I always note h…

I agree, it reminded me of the Woot! acquisition letter (which appears to no longer be up), but is largely excerpted here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/15230910030.shtml

It does sort of make you wonder what the reasoning is behind the stilted and formal marketing speak that is everywhere. How can that possibly be effective? Is it all just CYA and writing in such a way that nobody could possibly take offense to it?

Re: A New Name for Stack Overflow (with surprise ending)

#60

Post by cpeterso »

pnathan wrote: post #54
cletus wrote: post #29

I'm still seeing no evidence of success or traction beyond the original Stackoverflow. I'm kinda curious what their burn rate is. I think there are 20 odd employees now, not all of them engineers. That'll consume $2-3 million a year. One hopes they're simply stockpiling cash while valuations are good. I'm kinda curious what valuation they got. I haven't seen anything about that anywhere.

I use SO regularly. I am not sure where they plan to make their money. I see ads, but I would be surprised if that covers the costs of the labor (I'd love to be surprised here). I'm enjoying using it, and I would hate to see it fall over due to overexpansion/lack of cash flow.

Joel recently announced "Careers 2.0 by Stack Overflow", which sounds like it could make money:

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/

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