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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

#731

Post by moonchild »

skinnymuch wrote: post #492
aixi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned. And what would those be? I'm curious

Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1…

Is it advantageous for a company to own some of its competitor's stock?

Does it represent a conflict of interest?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#732

Post by biztos »

skinnymuch wrote: post #492
aixi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Time to revisit my assumptions with respect to how companies are owned. And what would those be? I'm curious

Possibly how weird it is to think of the ownership of ownerships and stakes. Nested Say there is a large [activist] investor -> who owns 5% of Naspers -> which has a sizeable stake in Prosus -> which has a sizeable stake in Tencent -> which has a sizeable stake in Epic Games (40%+) OR a majority stake in Tencent Music -> which has a respectable stake in Spotify (7.5%). Not to mention Tencent’s own stake in Spotify (1…

It totally blew my mind a few years ago to discover that this is also common in the bar & restaurant world.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#733

Post by mr_toad »

vultour wrote: post #306
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…

JavaScript is consistently in the #1 spot on their yearly developer survey, and remains as one of the most common tags on questions, so your experience certainly doesn't translate to the average JS developer.

People learn in different ways.

Some people will read the documentation, and MDN etc have excellent documentation.

Others will ask questions on SO.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#734

Post by pugworthy »

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…

And a nice reminder of being an early poster to popular things.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#735

Post by twelvechairs »

teamspirit wrote: post #714
edgyquant wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition For whom? For people who uses it since the beginning it isn’t even the same place anymore. It’s UX (and I’m not talking about the aesthetics of the new design, I don’t mind those) is legitimately the worst I’ve ever experienced and the quality of discussion has went down the drain. Even if you find a tightly controlled community dedicated to a topic you’re int…

old.reddit.com it's the only way to browse Reddit. Not sure for how long, but it's there. That way you don't have to deal with any of the new nonsense that has become Reddit.

3rd party apps are a better experience than old.reddit.com to be honest. Rif, sync, boost, relay, etc.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#736

Post by eggsbenedict »

allendoerfer wrote: post #661
khuey wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 valu…

How do you explain the prices of Class-C shares which don't bestow voting rights to the holder? For example, GOOG trades for over 2000 a share. In fact, it even trades at a $50 premium over GOOGL, which offers voting rights. Strange.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#737

Post by hutzlibu »

human wrote: post #706
skohan wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually glad MS would not also own SO. Github has been basically fine under MS ownership so far, but it seems like we're headed into a period of massive corporate consolidation, and I'd be happy if not all the developer tools are controlled by one interested party

I totally agree with you. Legislators should watch out for too much power consolidation here.

I am not sure, if developer tools are on the watchlist of state regulators, nor am I sure, if they should be.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#738

Post by mkoryak »

narag wrote: post #553
bhandziuk wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threshold is very low. https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges You need 15 points to up vote which means you need to have received 2 up-votes yourself on either a question or answer or have edited 7 questions/answers and had those approved. It's quite easy to hit those numbers. Once you have 1000 points (I think) on any site and you join a new site you get 100 points by default which means you always have those…

The threshold is very low. Well, not low enough for me. After a few attempts to answer some questions early on, I gave up. Read only for me. I don't even remember what the problem was. Why making contributing difficult and consuming easy? I guess it worked for them. Counterintuitive, but nice jackpot.

If you want, I'll give you some points by making a bounty on some old question and giving it to you. You have to answer it though.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#739

Post by sumedh »

izgzhen wrote: post #427
skeeter2020 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 agree. Why buying a company if you don’t want to make any change? Investment firms make profits by buying low and selling high, and it is hard to sell higher than the purchase price if things are kept the way it is.

> Why buying a company if you don’t want to make any change?

because it keeps printing money which you can use to acquire other companies. That is what Buffett does.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#740

Post by Romeoxogrowth »

I think this is a wise investment for them given that they have stakes in Codecademy and Udemy. They could probably build a more integrated school. Kinda like having their own flywheel. Software devs share info and help each other, then go learn a new language from Codecademy if they need extra help, plus more. The result? $0 spent on marketing and they have 2 gigantic investments that work together for effortless product based marketing.
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