4 ms·
Experts Exchange's need to talk about Stack Overflow is a sign of the shifting dynamic between the two sites and that they feel the need to make it negative ind
by Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Experts Exchange's need to talk about Stack Overflow is a sign of the shifting dynamic between the two sites and that they feel the need to make it negative indicates, to me at least, the relative strength of the two sites.
The issue is that EE is having to justify $12.95 a month worth of value over SO and, as a user of both sites, it seems to me that for a vast majority of people that value simply doesn't exist. Yes there is a free option but it's so badly hidden that it's clearly not something they have any real interest in and feels like it's there purely so they can say it's there. If that's not the case then then put it next to the various paid options.
Like many companies before them, they've found that their market has changed. What was previously a salable product is now something that is available for free (or at least something broadly comparable is available for free).
To be clear I have no issue with EE's right to charge for their service, I just think it's doomed to failure when the guy down the road doesn't.
There seem to be two options from here:
1) Tough it out and hope that SO doesn't last and that they can keep going with their existing business model. Suggesting that SO is going to run out of money sooner or later is fine. Maybe it will, maybe it won't but don't expect me to pay for your service while they are there and don't charge. That's the reality EE needs to deal with and if that's their strategy they need to hunker down and dig deep because it's going to cost them in the short term.
2) Look for a new business model. Either something totally new or at the very least a tweak to what they're doing now. No idea what it is, if I did I'd probably be doing it myself, but it seems to me that a new reality demands a new model and that simply denying that is railing against the dying of the light.
Maybe there is another choice they can look at but whatever it is, I don't think bad mouthing the competition is going to cut it.
- pestaa 16y agoBad mouthing actually works sometimes (read the plentyoffish story the other day?), but I agree it won't succeed in this audience. Would you think it could compete with SO if EE completely switched gears? Like, releasing all the content under Creative Commons?
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoI agree badmouthing can work but I also agree that this wasn't one of those times. Maybe early on IF Joel and Jeff hadn't had the sort of following among developers that they have they could have stopped SO gaining traction, but it's certainly not a good strategy now. As I say (in a recent edit), I don't know what the new business model is, just that you've got to question the old one given the changed market. If I sell beans and there is a shop next door giving them away, the fact I don't know how to compete doesn't change the reality of the situation - that sooner or later customers are going to leave me. The other issue they have to contend with is that your effectiveness as a site of this sort is proportional to the number and quality of users you have. As your users drift away, so do the chances of your being able to provide the remaining users with answers to their questions.
- prewett 16y agoOne of the things I hated about EE in the brief time I saw it before the paywall was that it is really, really ugly. And cluttered. It's actually even worse now... SO, on the other hand is clean and the content is easy to find. Even if EE stopped being sleazy, my eyes would rather go somewhere pleasant. (And what's up with the people without eyes? It makes the site feel really impersonal. A little odd for a forum.)
- dkersten 16y agofwiw, to me, Stackoverflow is worth $12.95 per month because its quick and easy as well as providing both quality answers and quality discussions. EE on the other hand provides questionable value (how do I know that they have an answer before I pay? They've lied about it before; The person who asked the question is rarely (contrary to what EE think) qualified to choose the best answer, SO overcomes this by both letting the asker select an answer AND letting the community decide; SO provides a metadiscussion (the comments) about each individual question and answer, afaik EE provides no way of requesting additional information or someting on somebody elses answer without polluting the list of answers). SO also doesn't practice sleazy spam techniques to get my attention. Of course, if SO decided to force people to pay, I would be less enthusiastic and that inconvenience would detract from its value.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoExperts Exchange's need to talk about Stack Overflow is a sign of the shifting dynamic between the two sites This. In a competitive market, you attack the guys above you, and ignore the guys below you. EE has just let the world know where they view themselves vis-a-vis SO.
- rmc 16y agoInitially SO talked about EE. (In some of their early podcasts and videos, they talk about "the site with the hyphen").
- praptak 16y agoYup, and at this time it was SO who were obviously the runner-up. How quickly this has changed!
- wisty 16y agoLike this one? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/whos-your-arch-enemy.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/whos-your-arch-enem...
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoIt's a great way to get business ideas - find someone who is doing something you think is useful but not doing it well and execute it better.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoYep, this was kind of my point. I've no idea if Jeff and Joel still talk about EE, the podcast is no more and I've not seen anything on the blog about it. But regardless of whether they do or not, EE seem to feel the need to talk about SO which they didn't in the past.