The StackExchange team did an exemplary job of pivoting the SE model[1] and I think they've seen the success they have today because of that action. Had they no

The StackExchange team did an exemplary job of pivoting the SE model[1] and I think they've seen the success they have today because of that action. Had they not pivoted, I think SE would have been associated with a lot of low traffic, and bad Q/A websites. Initially with SE you had to pay to setup your own SE site. As mentioned in the post, they found that the sites were doing poorly without the critical mass of people to answer questions. Creating Area 51 helped them objectively measure topic interest, and allowed users to determine whether the site had legs or not, and thusly validate whether the site was worth creating. Had they not done this, I don't think we'd be reading about such success today. [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/migration-of-se-1-0-sites/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/migration-of-se-1-0-si...