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DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

css-tricks.com

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Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#51

Post by tehbeard »

plexiglas wrote: post #41

What is DigitalOcean's strategy here? Kudos to CSS-Tricks on the acquisition!

as other comments have pointed out, DO have a strategy of writing great documentation, for stuff that isn't immediately there's (e.g. iptables/ufw, terrafrom, docker etc), these benefit people both using their platform already, and draw others in (find docs, hey these are useful, what else do they do?).

I could see them using this for both subtle (the header/footer links etc) and more "sponsered" content (i.e. links to DO AppPlatform in an article/tutorial about next.js etc)

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#52

Post by Traubenfuchs »

helipad wrote: post #19

All frontend developers: keep the Flexbox article alive please.

Their flexbox article kind of ended my (hobbyist) interest in front end styling. I just turn everything into flexboxes and everything behaves just like I want it to. And yes I do visit it every time I do front end styling.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#53

Post by Matsta »

It's already been mentioned in a few comments, but I imagine a big part of this purchase was influenced by the SEO power of the domain. CSS-Trick is a crazy powerful domain [1]

Google loves old domains with authority, and still, to this day, it's a lot easier to rank a site built on an aged/expired domain than it is on a fresh domain.

Buying powerful domains on auction sites has shot through the roof in the last couple of years. Here's a couple of example on Godaddy (Godaddy auctions tend to have the most powerful domains SEO-wise) https://www.godaddy.com/domain-auctions/gutenberg-net-414405... https://uk.godaddy.com/domain-auctions/freewebtemplates-com-...

I imagine they will eventually 301 the domain to the main DigitalOcean domain.

[1] - https://imgur.com/a/8XHWry9

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#54

Post by mbesto »

petercooper wrote: post #36

This is part of a broader trend. Last year, Balaji Srinivasan tweeted about the idea of SaaS companies buying media companies – https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1374363031417753609 – and as an observer/operator in this space, I've heard about a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes with larger companies expressing an interest in smaller media companies (including my own - I value autonomy too much but for…

> but high customer acquisition costs will continue to buy attention-based companies with relatively low acquisition costs because,

I don't disagree with the thesis, but is the ROI actually there? Why not just pay the media company to be an exclusive partner? Maybe it's just putting the acquisition cost on the balance sheet instead of the income statement?

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#55

Post by nkrisc »

Congratulations to them. I’ve always respected css-tricks for their sensible approach to online advertising: no malware distributing ad networks, just selling ad spots to companies that the audience of a css and web dev focused website might be interested in.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#56

Post by TIPSIO »

For your start up, a good blog could be a serious lead vehicle.

To generate a ton of traffic or be worth something, I find you need to balance three things (personal opinion):

- Normal longer Blog type articles / announcements

- Quick blog / library / resource / how-tos

- Engagement / community

Each are unique for everyone.

For example, Cloudflare I would argue leans heavy to the longer blog rolls and is a lead gen for enterprise reads, investors, and also new hire folks.

For SEO though, Digital Ocean cares more about the library of resources style (I would wager). It’s why they are buying CSS-Tricks to get all that “smooth scroll css” traffic. This is very much a traffic is traffic mentality to boost their own blog traffic metrics. There are probably other factors here like community / clout. Why build all this when you can just buy it?

Then finally the last one is engagement. This is what converts and is having an active community. This is why influencers can make serious buck. This is the hardest to build and I would argue the most important. A “real following”.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this too and how you use your blog for your start up or business.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#59

Post by altdataseller »

mbesto wrote: post #54
petercooper wrote: post #36

This is part of a broader trend. Last year, Balaji Srinivasan tweeted about the idea of SaaS companies buying media companies – https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1374363031417753609 – and as an observer/operator in this space, I've heard about a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes with larger companies expressing an interest in smaller media companies (including my own - I value autonomy too much but for…

> but high customer acquisition costs will continue to buy attention-based companies with relatively low acquisition costs because, I don't disagree with the thesis, but is the ROI actually there? Why not just pay the media company to be an exclusive partner? Maybe it's just putting the acquisition cost on the balance sheet instead of the income statement?

You lack control on what you want to do with the publication. Any of your competitors can bid higher, for instance. Or if you decide to do a campaign announcing a new feature, they might say No because they're busy/doing something else. This is probably pennies for DigitalOcean, btw, in the whole scheme of things.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#60

Post by reflectiv »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #40

Hope they keep the site as it is, css-tricks.com has been consistently one of the best, if not the best CSS site around, to the point that I search there for a particular topic before going to general purpose search engines, and you'll frequently find Chris' original articles copypasta'd by "content marketers" anyway. I guess the big time push for CSS3 with ever-changing responsive requirements and new UI idioms of t…

Yea...

DO has some really great documentation for their services so I am hopeful they will only enhance/make-better css-tricks.

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