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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

#801

Post by Retric »

ajdegol wrote: post #761
Retric wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Thi…

US dollars wouldn’t be worth very much either if you were the only one using them.

> The same is true if N people use the currency without any new money coming in they can’t cash out.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#803

Post by unhammer »

legooolas wrote: post #783
karlkatzke wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my funniest work experiences comes from a coworker who had a question about an obscure RHEL 5 thing long after RHEL5 should have been abolished, him googling it, and finding an answer I had posted about a decade before when RHEL5 was in beta and I had experienced and answered the same issue. Through the “asking and searching” phase, he was sitting next to me on a rooftop at a really stressful job, we were drin…

I've had the same experience of looking up and finding an old answer from someone I knew, but one that I made _myself_ for the exact same problem I've just hit again years later... :D

Happens to me all the time. I'm either not automating enough things, or automating too many things.

Btw, is there a simple way to backup all of ones own answers from across all stackexchange, in case the new owners mess everything up?

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#804

Post by wizzwizz4 »

narag wrote: post #587
bhandziuk wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can remember it's always been this way: very low barrier to entry. All you have to do is make an account to ask and answer questions. I don't know why you had a hard time posting. Maybe you're thinking of commenting? The counter is ExpertsExchange: very difficult to do both.

No idea, but I was just trying to answer some questions. I remember vaguely that I needed some points to help and I needed to help to get the points, so... I shrugged and let it be.

If a question is very popular, a lot of people think it's like a normal forum and post “me too” answers. (Or, at least, they used to, before everyone knew Stack Overflow.) So there's a mechanism to “protect” questions so you need at least 10 rep (on that site – the “you contributed lots on another site so probably aren't a spammer” bonus doesn't count) before you can answer.

Very few questions are protected.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#805

Post by astrange »

midasuni wrote: post #760
astrange wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones that don’t are valued on the assumption that they will in the future.

Have google, Facebook amazon or Netflix ever issued a dividend?

They are likely to do stock buybacks which are the same thing. You’re certainly not buying them for voting rights - FB and Google almost don’t give those out, and ETFs don’t pass on their voting rights but are not cheaper than the underlying stocks.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#807

Post by pavel_lishin »

zerocrates wrote: post #648
swiley wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that "old." still works is a pretty strong indication that the new redesign is to ensure new users will tolerate manipulation while retaining a large portion of the old users. Looking at the ratio of old/new site users is probably a very powerful analytics tool for predicting ad revenue for a given subreddit.

In my occasional interactions on Reddit it seems a very large proportion of users are on the "new" Reddit, the mobile site, or an app. I'm sure it varies by community though (especially ones that heavily use custom CSS and things that don't work on the new site). Just as one example I can recall, you can do things that are kind of like "quote retweets" with the cross-post feature that don't really make sense on the o…

> In my occasional interactions on Reddit it seems a very large proportion of users are on the "new" Reddit, the mobile site, or an app.

Same. And many of them message me directly via chat when they have a question about a subreddit I moderate. Chat which I check about every two months, which is for some reason fully distinct from both the regular messaging functionality (which to be fair, is very well hidden) and the two methods of contacting the moderators.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#808

Post by dreen »

What sites have done better after being sold after being already successful?

This is an honest question, theres probably some but I dont know. Most known sites seem to fade into obscurity after a high profile purchase.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#809

Post by allendoerfer »

eggsbenedict wrote: post #736
allendoerfer wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don’t have to control a company personally, you can also rely on other shareholders to do that. You just have to know, somebody is voting in your interests, since you probably won’t do it (but again: you could).

I don’t know whether your statement about the price difference is true and if so, I don’t know why. Maybe different free float? My statement was about inherent value not short term price negotiations via stock exchange.

I thought about an actual attack against my argument: Stocks are just shares of companies, which sell stuff that is valuable because other people think so. Some stuff might have inherent value (because it can generate money), but in the end it still comes down to people deciding something has value. Turtles all the way down.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#810

Post by SavantIdiot »

dreen wrote: post #808

What sites have done better after being sold after being already successful? This is an honest question, theres probably some but I dont know. Most known sites seem to fade into obscurity after a high profile purchase.

GitHub. Microsoft bought it, people said it was doomed, it has grown.
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