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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

#751

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

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…

> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now.

Says everyone who is involved in huge company acquisitions ever, and most of the time it does not hold true. The rest is common marketing talk.

I'm certainly not saying it is impossible for that to be true, but such a statement itself does not hold any value.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#752

Post by thirdsun »

LegitShady wrote: post #623
sjclemmy wrote: post #346

Fun fact and one of my dinner party anecdotes; I have the accepted answer for one of Ross Ulbricht’s (Silk Road’s Dread Pirate Roberts) SO questions that got him busted. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9563675/destroying-a-spe...

Not exactly on topic but I click on this link and it's been a long time since I went on SO...it popped up the cookies choice thing...except it remembered my choices from last time so there was no reason to...I think it was just hoping i'd mistakenly hit 'accept all'.

Did it really remember all your choices or did your choices just match with the default settings (strictly necessary = on, everything else = off)?

In either case, it's still a problem. It's my impression that if you make the effort to actually customize and decline those options you'll have to do it repeatedly since very few sites will remember those choices - probably on purpose. Luckily uBlock Origin hides most of those annoying consent popups.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#753

Post by iFreilicht »

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...

All the free content you and I provided is our way of giving back to the community that answered our questions.

That content generates value for SO, but they do provide the infrastructure we use for free to get our problems solved and questions answered, so it seems like a fair deal to me.

If you didn't want anyone to profit from your answers, you shouldn't post them. If your answer is reasonably popular, you can bet it will be used in a product that makes money without you ever getting compensated for that.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#754

Post by joelbluminator »

klmr wrote: post #295
dystroy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. I'm in the top 0.07% with 300k+. Even such an account is worth nothing. Almost never did a recruiter pay attention to this. My low-rate GitHub account has a much bigger impact.

That’s definitely not true. I’m getting contacted by recruiters (and occasionally directly by companies, including for my current job) because of my Stack Overflow profile. That said, my profile is very clearly linked to a real person, I don’t see how resale would even work (not that I’d consider it).

Do you feel there was a certain threshold you passed which made recruiters see your profile and start contacting you? E.g you passed 10k score or won some gold badge in some framework?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#755

Post by ineedasername »

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…

Well, those internet points are at least likely to be harder currency than the highly inflationary retweets, upvotes, or likes.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#756

Post by bouncycastle »

shanebrunette wrote: post #625
khuey wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As a counterpoint, YFI literally buys back it's token from fees earned from users using their automated yield farming strategy. There are plenty of duds around, but that doesn't make everything a dud.

Yes, cryptocurrency can be programmed in many different ways and can be defined as several different things at once.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#757

Post by ineedasername »

sangnoir wrote: post #143
numair wrote: post #28

This is absolutely phenomenal. Naspers/Prosus are some of the savviest and most forward-thinking players in tech investment — would you have been smart enough to give Tencent all that money, way back when? And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. This is much more interesting than a monopolist like Microsoft buying SO, and I’d be keen to see what the growth strategy is…

> And remember, they were a bunch of nobodies based out of South Africa when that happened. Hard disagree - they weren't nobodies, Naspers was already a media juggernaut by 2001 (print and TV). Naspers was founded in 1915 (as De Nasionale Pers Beperkt - National Press) to promote Afrikaner Nationalism in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer war. One of Naspers founders was also the founding president of the National Party…

>Apartheid

Sure, but it did gain significant market share and had a massive ROI for many decades for anyone on the profitable side of it. For raging racists & (white) sociopaths, it wasn't so bad.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#758

Post by catblast01 »

joelbluminator wrote: post #517
gm3dmo wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TomTom and BlackBerry had great brands, marketing and great software stacks. I still correct the google maps voice when it tells me to take the third exit on the roundabout. It’s “roundabound”. The people who ran those companies didn’t see anybody stealing their businesses either. Yet they are well and truly gone. https://youtu.be/ATulnxruvhQ

Not sure TomTom had as dominant a brand for navigation as Stackoverflow has for Q&A. Stackoverflow is pretty much alone in this space still which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

Quora?
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