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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

#661

Post by allendoerfer »

khuey wrote: post #599
ThomasRedstone wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't how a Ponzi scheme works, a Ponzi scheme directly uses fees taken from new members to pay out older ones, lying and saying it's from actual business activity. Crypto doesn't behave any differently than the stock market (except the fundamentals are a little shakier, okay, a lot shakier).

Cryptocurrency doesn't have dividends or share buybacks which are what make stocks have inherent value.

Stocks do not need buybacks or dividends. They are rights to control a share of a company, which earns (or potentially earns) money. That’s inherently valuable even without a stock market to determine a price. You control a machine, which makes things and earns money.

Crypto is only valuable, because others think so, too. You control a place inside a distributed list. Others think a place in exactly this list is valuable, while all the other lists are shitcoins.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#662

Post by CRConrad »

bhandziuk wrote: post #644
CRConrad wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they -- SX, that is -- need so many different sites?

Are you suggesting you use a different account per SX site?

No, I don't, but I'm suggesting that the UI could well be (or especially, earlier have been?) confusing enough for a lot of people not to realise they could use the same one on them all.

Just, say, google some programming question, get directed to SO, create an ID and post your question. Some time later, google an OS -- or maths, literature, whatever -- question, get directed to a different SX site, and repeat the process before (or wholly without) realising they're parts of the same whole.

Possibly do the same a few more times, and hey presto, you have umpteen SX IDs.

Seems utterly plausible to me. Not you?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#663

Post by aiisjustanif »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #331
ddingus wrote: post #318

While I'm happy for the people who made a lot of money in this transaction, I always read these announcements with a bit of angst. From a user point of view, I expect this to go like Reddit has, for example. Everyone building that value saw high use value, returns on their investment in the form of information they need, lean, easy to find, high signal to noise. Now there is a debt to be paid. The new owner needs to…

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…

> Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it.

Now Bon Appetit on the other hand...

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#664

Post by johnchristopher »

ljm wrote: post #650
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).

For me, I just don't use it often enough to log back in. It's largely been supplanted by browsing issue trackers and reading the source. At the same time, google search results are massively less useful now and if I don't get a hit, I'm going to reach out to the source. To that extent, I think SO has the same problem as Google - it will regress to the mean. This is also because google search results will be flooded w…

I like logging in and bookmark answers I might need later.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#665

Post by soheil »

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."

I feel like this is basically a cookie cutter declaration you make as part of an acquisition nowadays, not too dissimilar to “sorry we can’t provide feedback for why we rejected you as a job candidate.”

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#666

Post by Juntu »

1.8 b is equal to 2b but another 2 mill won’t hurt sold bin price but i would raise the stakes unforgiving deal what you ask for always will not your satisfaction in the end when it meets in the middle my price is right prosus won the bargain maybe going beyond and 2 million less than 2b is enough. Maximum level coding is Juntu. I’m known but it’s anonymous hit first claim your cig smoke guhd break do. What makes sense is logical but my minds at 1000 in maximum level.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#667

Post by geoduck14 »

soperj wrote: post #259
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.

What are some esoteric things that you think are stupid right now? Asking for a friend.

Tesla

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#668

Post by geebee »

Wow, remarkable.

Tech forums were a crowded field when stack overflow entered, but it really was a cut above everything else.

Good answers, well moderated, no dancing mortgage ads, no long bitter arguments where people call each other idiots because they use Java, no pop up windows. That's not the worst path to 1.8 bil.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#669

Post by Retric »

xur17 wrote: post #660
khuey wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency doesn't have dividends or share buybacks which are what make stocks have inherent value.

Yes it does. Proof of stake networks (Ethereum, Tezos, etc) pay dividends + transaction fees to stakers, decentralized exchanges pay a cut of fees to token holders (with decent P/E ratios), and the list goes on. This is an out of date view that does not match the current reality.

As a thought exercise, suppose a proof is stake currency was only used by one person. How exactly does do it’s dividends create value? In short “crypto dividends” don’t actually create any value it’s purely incrementing an arbitrary number rather than creating an income stream.

The same is true if N people use the currency without any new money coming in they can’t cash out. Therefore it’s not an actual dividend. This is why everyone calls crypto a pyramid scheme, the only way to cash out is to get someone else to buy in.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#670

Post by fastball »

bjourne wrote: post #467

One one hand, I'm glad that Stackoverflow is profitable. That someone is making money on it. On the other, I'm peeved that someone made two billion on all free content I and others created for no other gain than imaginary internet points. Without our work, SO wouldn't have been worth much. None of us can objectively claim to have been take advantage of... but still...

$1.8B is the value of the business that encouraged this content creation, not the value of the information that has flowed through SO. The developer productivity gained by the existence of SO is probably on the order of trillions.
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