4 ms·

The first half of the article contains a huge amount of gloating about the size and reach of Stack Overflow. Then the second half of the article has gems like

The first half of the article contains a huge amount of gloating about the size and reach of Stack Overflow. Then the second half of the article has gems like > in order to continue to fuel our growth Why does it have to be this way? SO is an immensely useful resource and a sustainable business. Why does every company need to continue to grow until they lose the essence of what made them good? Why can't companies be satisfied with making a decent chunk of change, paying their employees a fair wage and delivering value to their customer base?

fabian2k 7y ago
The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which means they need to grow 10X in the near future. They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are paying 1 million+, I know this doesn't add up entirely, but that's the only information publicly available that I know of). The numbers are all from the following interview with Joel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1275&v=zMfxd9y0cMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1275&v=zMfxd9y0c...
- tmpz22 7y ago
  I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?
  - Macha 7y ago
    The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in people's minds at that time for hiding answers behind signup walls.
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.
      - Macha 7y ago
        They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data, similar to how you can run Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap locally (or from anywhere, really). Good timing considering Distributed Web efforts [1]. Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF [2], word is Twitter's team focused on the same goals will be in attendence. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets-88949818301 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets...
        reificator 7y ago
        > Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF I'm not even being flippant here, this is an earnest piece of feedback. Please don't call yourselves `dwebs`. That's just asking for people to not take you seriously.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        No relation to any org in the meetup, just calling it what it was called in the online marketing of it. I’d agree the marketing needs some tweaks.
        chii 7y ago
        > Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data only if SO allows them to (by licensing the contents of SO liberally as they are currently doing). But they can stop at any time.
  - irrational 7y ago
    It wouldn't all be bad. So very many of the web development answers use jQuery. At least a clean start would mean a lot of those would go away.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    People said the same about expertsexchange until SO did it. If they make it suck badly enough, something else will gain momentum and replace it. Get the Jon Skeets of the world onboard and you're most of the way there. Quora had the right idea initially, by subsidizing quality answerers, but they went too broad, and it devolved to Yahoo Answers quality.
m463 7y ago
I've often thought "What happened to companies that just make and sell things"

fabian2k 7y ago

The company took VC money, growing in a sensible and sustainable way isn't an option. They're targeting an IPO according to the former CEO and co-founder Joel Spolsky, which means they need to grow 10X in the near future. They're making around 70 million a year now, 44 million from the job platform, 16 million from ads and the rest from the private SO Teams/Enterprise software (28 large corporations are paying 1 million+, I know this doesn't add up entirely, but that's the only information publicly available that I know of). The numbers are all from the following interview with Joel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1275&v=zMfxd9y0cMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1275&v=zMfxd9y0c...

tmpz22 7y ago
I hate how hard it would be for a competitor to come into the market now and attempt to build the same knowledge bank StackOverflow can now gatekeep. We've commercialized data hoarding and segregation... is the end game for StackOverflow to become Elsevier for programming?
- Macha 7y ago
  The knowledge bank itself is available under creative commons. You can download it here (updated quarterly): https://archive.org/details/stackexchange https://archive.org/details/stackexchange or query it online here: https://data.stackexchange.com/ https://data.stackexchange.com/ At least until current leadership kills it. But it was one of the things Jeff and Joel did to convince the community that that was not their goal, and the previous market leader, experts exchange was fresh in people's minds at that time for hiding answers behind signup walls.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    They can't really kill it, right? The content itself is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Version... uh... well it's definitely Creative Commons.
    - Macha 7y ago
      They can stop providing updates and let it go stale.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data, similar to how you can run Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap locally (or from anywhere, really). Good timing considering Distributed Web efforts [1]. Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF [2], word is Twitter's team focused on the same goals will be in attendence. [1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/ [2] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets-88949818301 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dweb-sf-meet-up-january-tickets...
        reificator 7y ago
        > Internet Archive is having a Dweb meetup tonight FYI if you're in SF I'm not even being flippant here, this is an earnest piece of feedback. Please don't call yourselves `dwebs`. That's just asking for people to not take you seriously.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
        No relation to any org in the meetup, just calling it what it was called in the online marketing of it. I’d agree the marketing needs some tweaks.
        chii 7y ago
        > Someone else can create a front end to the dumped data only if SO allows them to (by licensing the contents of SO liberally as they are currently doing). But they can stop at any time.
- irrational 7y ago
  It wouldn't all be bad. So very many of the web development answers use jQuery. At least a clean start would mean a lot of those would go away.
- thrower123 7y ago
  People said the same about expertsexchange until SO did it. If they make it suck badly enough, something else will gain momentum and replace it. Get the Jon Skeets of the world onboard and you're most of the way there. Quora had the right idea initially, by subsidizing quality answerers, but they went too broad, and it devolved to Yahoo Answers quality.

m463 7y ago

I've often thought "What happened to companies that just make and sell things"