Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B • Hacker News Board

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#851

Post by edgyquant » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

wokwokwok wrote: post #850

edgyquant wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed the fact that there is little to no quality content on Reddit anymore with the exception of a few niche subs (and they tend tend to be quality for long.). This was actually the main point I made.

Objective metrics (like user engagement and active users per day) are probably more relevant than your opinion of “quality” content.

Not really, we aren’t talking about user engagement in fact quite the opposite. The whole point of this comment chain is that SO may go the same route where they sacrifice quality for such engagement to turn a profit. It’s true quality isn’t something that is easy to quantitate but user engagement sure isn’t equal to quality at all. Facebook has ridiculously high user engagement and multiple times (almost 10x) the users that Reddit does and if you try arguing that it is full of quality content you’ll be laughed out of pretty much any room.

Just so we’re clear and to further my point, the website you’re posting on exists because over a decade ago people said that Reddit had dropped significantly in terms of quality of discussion. I’m not the only one saying this you find it here and even on Reddit anytime the subject of quality of content on Reddit is brought up.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#852

Post by xpe » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:05 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #806

xpe wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your basis for saying this?

Are you asking me to link the Wikipedia article for capital asset pricing?

You could have written "the Wikipedia article for capital asset pricing". I don't see the need to make it a question.

Your comment comes across as passive aggressive, unfortunately. I hope that wasn't your intent.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#853

Post by xpe » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #806

xpe wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your basis for saying this?

Are you asking me to link the Wikipedia article for capital asset pricing?

> The [stocks] that don’t [pay a dividend] are valued on the assumption that they will in the future.

Could you please make a specific section that justifies your claim?

I skimmed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_asset_pricing_model but I don't see anything there that validates your claim. I may have overlooked something, if so please let me know.

I'm skeptical of your claim. Based on some other reading [1]:

> To manage your portfolio, you need a way to compare your different investments and decide which are worth keeping. The dividend discount model and the capital asset pricing model are two methods for appraising the value of your investments. DDM is based on the value of the dividends a share of stock brings in, whereas CAPM evaluates risks and returns compared to the market average.

[1] https://budgeting.thenest.com/capm-vs-ddm-24472.html

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#854

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #745

chadlavi wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You've read 3 of your 5 free answers this month"

SO is CC at the moment IIRC - time to download it all and stick the historic stuff on a static site

They can’t legally retroactively change the license on existing content though - and as soon as they change their EULA to say “You irrevocably assign copyright on your postings to us” then they’ll lose their thought-leader users - and the rest tumbles.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#855

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #826

quickthrower2 wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a long time ago. SO has the network effects to pull this off

SO can be cloned very easily nowadays. Network effects are actually getting worse with time; fewer and fewer people actually hang around SO, and it's increasingly spammed by students looking for free homework and people gaming for reputation. As soon as SO vacates the free tier even a little bit, someone else will jump in.

SO is already cloned - every few months another new SO content farm comes along and clogs up the Google search results.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#856

Post by sixothree » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

karlkatzke wrote: post #720

wwweston wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dynamic makes sense: the more popular the question, the more likely it is to get asked early on. That means early answerers will reap benefits from the popularity of the questions down the road. There's definitely an "interest" dynamic to it, but there's also something like consuming the solutions with a good effort-to-reward ratio inside a search space early and then subsequent solutions get harder (kindof like…

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 found an answer I had posted a few years prior.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#857

Post by DougN7 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

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

I’ve had a worse experience - I end up looking for a solution to a problem only to find an unanswered question from years earlier, which was also asked by me back then :(

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#858

Post by sshagent » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

DougN7 wrote: post #857

legooolas wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’ve had a worse experience - I end up looking for a solution to a problem only to find an unanswered question from years earlier, which was also asked by me back then :(

I've done this too. Its at the point, i figure there is no solution

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#859

Post by maypeacepreva1l » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:48 AM UTC

I think Google might have tweaked their search to not always go to stack overflow. That might be start of their downfall. Recent times it is rarely stack overflow as top result and it happened suddenly, not gradually.

Re: Stack Overflow sold to Prosus for $1.8B

#860

Post by prepend » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

ppezaris wrote: post #816

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 sold a company to Naspers once (the parent company of Prosus). Their philosophy is to let their portfolio companies continue to operate independently. I continued to be the CEO of my company, and I reported to a regional CEO, who reported to the CEO of Naspers. I share this because I found it odd that "CEO" was basically a middle manager ;)

That’s interesting and sounds positive you had autonomy.

Did they have an expected return on investment and just use your existing planned earnings growth? If they didn’t change your earnings slope, did they have a timeframe in mind for the multiple they used to buy you?

For example, if you earned $1 in the year of purchase and $.50 the year before and projected $2,3,4,5 in the next four years; did they use this for your purchase price? Or did they project some efficiency that shifted your projections to $3,4,5,6 and used that for the purchase valuation?

Only if you’re able to discuss, obviously.