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1. Company builds a product with no/minimal ads and uses community involvement to grow. 2. Company adds more ads to the system to earn money. 3. Company adds
by wtmt 7y ago
1. Company builds a product with no/minimal ads and uses community involvement to grow.
2. Company adds more ads to the system to earn money.
3. Company adds more "features" to make money (for expenses and...to make money).
4. Company reduces consulting with the community because the purpose of the community, to grow the site and userbase, has been served well and the community's interests conflict, at times, with the company's commercial interests and directions.
5. Community complains that this is not good.
What would people expect after this? That the company would have a change of heart and go back to how it was years ago? I don't think that's easily possible nor desirable by the company. I'd expect that responses, or the lack of appropriate responses, would be to have those who are unhappy to leave.
- zepolen 7y agoCircle of life. Stack Overflow came about as a direct solution to Experts Exchange that was doing exactly the same thing. So now it's up to someone to build a new solution which will last for another 10 years until they too decide to cash in. Probably the smart move from Stack Overflow is to secretly create the competitor themselves.