11 ms·

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

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 extract the purchase price, and whatever additional additional returns they intend. Everything costs something. So what will it be? Subscription access? Less favorable signal to noise?

sillysaurusx 5y ago
I dunno. Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. But I agree with you overall. I'm a bit nervous too. Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. EDIT: In the other announcement post (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ...): Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I wonder how true this will be over time.
- skunkworker 5y ago
  Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica, which personally is my favorite tech-news site and has high and consistent quality.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. But there is still a lot to be seen on that front. Ars is an example of a successful acquisition. I totally agree.
    - milkytron 5y ago
      > I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. I would agree, although I do not think it has been particularly bad either. If they had broken apps the enhance reddit and removed old.reddit.com, then I would think otherwise. For the most part, I am still able to use the site as I have since 2011.
      - ddingus 5y ago
        To me, and I'm in the same scenario as you, that's mostly bad. old.reddit.com isn't going to last, is it?
        bhaak 5y ago
        For what it's worth, even i.reddit.com aka reddit.com/.compact is still working.
  - thefz 5y ago
    Yes and no. Article comment can be toxic downvote brigades to anyone who does not adhere to the hive's opinion and Ars is a mala fide Apple boot licker to the bone. Ars forums have gone to hell in this regard.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      Not sure the fourms are caused by acquisition. I do see the UX experience being more thick, less favorable signal to noise happening due to acquisition. There may be editorial conflicts of interest too. I do not notice at present.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      If you don't like downvotes then make your own subreddit and attract like opinions. I personally don't think posts should be voted more negative than -1.
      - thefz 5y ago
        That's really mature, bravo.
  - phist_mcgee 5y ago
    If you ever want to see thee Ars community dogpile on a certain topic, read any article on cryptocurrencies. You will get the following comments at the top of the heap: Crypto means I can't buy a graphics card Crypto is a ponzi scheme and should be banned It is immoral to own Bitcoin, and governments should punish people who do Would you like to buy my new XCoin ha ha ha. Elon Musk is amazing, but this crypto thing makes me a little unhappy with him. Ad nauseum. I have been visiting that site less and less, because I think the audience has become an echo chamber.
    - phist_mcgee 5y ago
      I think the downvotes on my comment show I have hit a nerve. I did not disagree with any of the points I listed, I am simply pointing out a fact. Downvoting this comment does disprove not my point. The downvotes without engaging with my post are what is wrong with commodified community participation (comment/post points); exactly what harms Stack Overflow in the long run.
      - panopticon 5y ago
        You posted a tangential rant disparaging the comment section of another website. The voting system is the most appropriate response to flamebait.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  >> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I've been a part of a couple of these. This statement is somewhere on the spectrum of absolutely naive to willfully disingenuous. "Someone just paid 2 billion dollars to buy us, but they're not going to change anything, exert any influence or expect payback beyond what we've already been doing."
  - spurgu 5y ago
    Naive indeed. I flew to meet a company we had just acquired and I personally promised them that nothing would change. Even though I believed it at the time of course it didn't pan out that way and to this day I regret saying that.
    - sulam 5y ago
      Wow, yeah, never say that. Even if you believe it's true, saying nothing will change is sort of like waving a red flag in front of the bull. Of course things will change over time, they always do!
      - GenerocUsername 5y ago
        Its like fixing the wifi router for your parents and then having them call you to complain that their emails now have a signature at the bottom... "I didnt do that", "Well, you were the last one to touch the internet"
        monsieurbanana 5y ago
        Except that in this situation, you really did put the signature on those emails.
        rightbyte 5y ago
        Well to be fair that is how my coworkers (and I) think too. The one with the latest commit get a ping when the top break.
  - 5y ago
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Reddit's managed that on their own.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Their current plan seems to be a race to the bottom; a new re-design for the default landing page that rewards infinite scroll over in-depth content. Meanwhile, the moderation tools are still garbage.
  - chairmanwow1 5y ago
    Their app is 2x slower than their mobile site and their new mobile site is 4x slower than their old site. Why do these brands feel the need to make everything a fucking SPA.
    - jakub_g 5y ago
      Plus the constant nag to install the app on mobile, and sometimes even downright blocking access and "see in the app". (For now there's still "old." subdomain which works if you enable desktop emulation on mobile, but it can shut down any day).
      - swiley 5y ago
        The fact that "old." still works is a pretty strong indication that the new redesign is to ensure new users will tolerate manipulation while retaining a large portion of the old users. Looking at the ratio of old/new site users is probably a very powerful analytics tool for predicting ad revenue for a given subreddit.
        zerocrates 5y ago
        In my occasional interactions on Reddit it seems a very large proportion of users are on the "new" Reddit, the mobile site, or an app. I'm sure it varies by community though (especially ones that heavily use custom CSS and things that don't work on the new site). Just as one example I can recall, you can do things that are kind of like "quote retweets" with the cross-post feature that don't really make sense on the old site (on "new Reddit" when you crosspost the original post/title are displayed in a little window so you'll see people make titles that are actually commenting on the original post and not on whatever the link actually is). On old Reddit these just show up as links to whatever the original post linked to, but with the "meta-commentary" title. More than once I've encountered one of these with confusion until a comment explained, or I thought to check the tab that shows where else the same link has been posted.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Reddit is simply dying a slow death. I wouldn't touch the place now.
- will4274 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. I would have said the exact opposite. The Reddit community was destroyed. People no longer recommend Reddit for interesting discussions or speak excitedly about its communities. Conde Nast monetized and changed Reddit, recouping their investment, and now it's hard to find people who have good things to say about it. Consider e.g. /r/darknetplan or similar topic focused subreddit a that were thriving in the early 2000s - all graveyards today. Those people are on Discord now.
  - ssaturn 5y ago
    Where can I find links to these discord invites?
    - hirako2000 5y ago
      https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet
  - jedberg 5y ago
    That subreddit was started after the acquisition. In fact, every subreddit was, because user created subreddits were paid for by Conde Nast. As was self posts and pretty much every major innovation. It was after they brought in outside investors that they were pressured to monetize.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Reddit itself didn't exist in the early 2000s wtf is this /r/darknetplan itself is from late 2010 You're just bullshitting wtf These are verifiable facts (go to /r/darknetplan and cmd-f for "community for" and then select that text).
- htrp 5y ago
  > Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Ehhhh not so sure on that one.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  >Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. That.... is a very positive view of Reddit. I'd say everything on Reddit is way worse now and going downhill fast.
  - lupire 5y ago
    That was after Conde Nast sold.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      Also before. It isn't something new. I'm amazed it can still become worse but it does.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    No it isn't.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      Are we really at YES NO YES NO discussion levels?
- soheil 5y ago
  > Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. I wonder how much of it is Google making it look good by providing laser-precise results for the vaguest search queries.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  >most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices ...at least until this purchase news died down a bit, and then we can get some managers in there to make new priorities and get some of the old ones out...
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  > Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Now Bon Appetit on the other hand...
- edgyquant 5y ago
  >Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition For whom? For people who uses it since the beginning it isn’t even the same place anymore. It’s UX (and I’m not talking about the aesthetics of the new design, I don’t mind those) is legitimately the worst I’ve ever experienced and the quality of discussion has went down the drain. Even if you find a tightly controlled community dedicated to a topic you’re interested in it’s either one extreme to another or doesn’t last long. That doesn’t even get into the constant rolling out for Facebook-tier features that no Reddit user ever wanted. I stopped using Reddit last month after ~12 years and I’ve since realized I was getting nothing but regurgitated memes and anger from a dozen people replying to my every comment who aren’t even addressing what I was saying just arguing for arguments sake. It’s basically what Facebook groups were in 2016 at this point. I’m sure it’s a great acquisition for those who bought it, but for the old power users it’s anything but.
  - teamspirit 5y ago
    old.reddit.com it's the only way to browse Reddit. Not sure for how long, but it's there. That way you don't have to deal with any of the new nonsense that has become Reddit.
    - twelvechairs 5y ago
      3rd party apps are a better experience than old.reddit.com to be honest. Rif, sync, boost, relay, etc.
      - Semaphor 5y ago
        All of those are mobile-only though.
    - aerique 5y ago
      And for mobile stick ".compact" at the end.
  - wokwokwok 5y ago
    > For whom? Well, most people right? Power users are by almost by definition an insignificant (but over represented in discussions and noise making) cohort right? If the platform keeps quality content, gets more users over time and maintains both a good DAU and RPU, then, well, what objective metric of success do you want to measure? Number of happy power users? I really think most people don't care about that metric. With SO it remains to be seen...; the power users there are the mods, and they contribute tangible value to the platform... but... you know, the writing is already on the wall. Whether this does it, or it was coming anyway, it's hard to say.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  > The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. Says everyone who is involved in huge company acquisitions ever, and most of the time it does not hold true. The rest is common marketing talk. I'm certainly not saying it is impossible for that to be true, but such a statement itself does not hold any value.
- m463 5y ago
  > Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. In relation to money, or to users? Reddit is awful now, forcing everyone to an app and privacy out the window
skeeter2020 5y ago
They'll double-down on the enterprise offer I would think. I don't think jobs was the money-maker they planned on, and the public individual site doesn't have a lot of revenue approaches that justify ~2B purchase price. I'm sure they original VCs made money but not sure it's their typical unicorn multiple.
- ddingus 5y ago
  Great take. You're very likely to be proven in that observation.
ethbr0 5y ago
"Log in to see 8 answers on Qu^H^HStack Overflow!"
- ddingus 5y ago
  Yes, could very well be that. However I wrote a bit of angst because maybe they'll be smart about it and this will be okay.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chadlavi 5y ago
"You've read 3 of your 5 free answers this month"
- jbb_hn 5y ago
  Sadly, I think you probably nailed it. Back in the day, “experts exchange” was the place to get answers to questions, and look where they’re at. 2 billion dollars. That’s a LOT of money even by 2021 standards. You better believe the investors will be looking for their ROI.
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    Experts exchange was NEVER the place to get answers. They just perfected the SEO so that Google would point to them first. But everything was behind paywalls and it was never useful.
    - jbb_hn 5y ago
      That wasn’t my experience, but I’m referring to the mid to late 90’s timeframe before “paywall” was even a thing.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  SO is CC at the moment IIRC - time to download it all and stick the historic stuff on a static site
  - glaucon 5y ago
    Seems to be the case of now https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing . One of the more recent features added to SO was a timeline of activity and within the timeline you can see which license each the question is under. Here's an example for a random question https://stackoverflow.com/posts/49083680/timeline https://stackoverflow.com/posts/49083680/timeline . It's kind of weird that while the questions have a license declared the answer don't ... not sure what that's all about.
  - 5y ago
Old_Thrashbarg 5y ago
I'll just be happy if they keep their Creative Commons licensing.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I think this will not happen immediately because people would panic and run. It will be more subtle and over a couple years, but it will fade away in time.
Ericson2314 5y ago
This is why we societal debt > equity, for ownership is like a debt that can never be paid back. I'm convinced this is a sensitivity to initial conditions phenomenon where if we hadn't transitioned to capitalism from feudalism, equity/ownership-like contracts would be laughed out of the room. "Perpetuity? C'mon!"
sys_64738 5y ago
Subs, ads or something else to monetize. You can't spend $1.8b and expect things to stay the same.
callamdelaney 5y ago
They already make money by having a job board (probably one of the best around for hiring devs, so probably costs a bomb) and they sell an internal version of SO for enterprise customers.
yougotrioted 5y ago
You saw it with their latest April fools joke - Premium Copy & Paste
wraptile 5y ago
StackOverflow was successfully expanding their service even before this purchase. I'd imagine stackoverflow jobs is a valuable area - sure it's not linkedin but it's still really good. SO also has really strong community following so there's always room for easy expanding. It's not about the QA area but other areas that surround it. There are a lot of ways to integrate products to QA part of the web - you already see "Python jobs" on python questions which I'd imagine should work really well!
- whatatita 5y ago
  I'd imagine Stackoverflow for Teams will be a big part of it too. We use it a t work and I'm sure lots of big enterprises would be happy to pay good money to build in-house QA and knowledge sharing.
jope12 5y ago
The whole point of creating Stack Overflow was to not have subscription access like Experts Exchange. Doing that would be suicide for SO.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  That was a long time ago. SO has the network effects to pull this off
  - toyg 5y ago
    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.
    - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
      SO is already cloned - every few months another new SO content farm comes along and clogs up the Google search results.
z0ltan 5y ago
Asking the right questions indeed.
ComodoHacker 5y ago
On the other hand, it could lead to a decline of infamous "SO programming style" which is not that bad.
dalmo3 5y ago
>I expect this to go like Reddit has "Download the app to see the answers!"
russellendicott 5y ago
I wonder if these acquisitions are like the new art collections of the super wealthy.
ppezaris 5y ago
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 ;)
- prepend 5y ago
  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.
  - ppezaris 5y ago
    Our company had just transitioned from social networking to social commerce, and was starting to build out features like a shopping cart, product listings, etc. So the valuation was mostly hand-waiving based on the fact that we were the most recognized e-commerce brand in the region, despite not really being an e-commerce business yet. We were doing about half a billion in annual GMV but none of it monetized yet.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I dunno. Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. But I agree with you overall. I'm a bit nervous too. Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. EDIT: In the other announcement post (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announcement/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2021/06/02/kinda-a-big-announ...): Today we’re pleased to announce that Stack Overflow is joining Prosus. Prosus is an investment and holding company, which means that the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I wonder how true this will be over time.

skunkworker 5y ago
Conde Nast also owns Ars Technica, which personally is my favorite tech-news site and has high and consistent quality.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. But there is still a lot to be seen on that front. Ars is an example of a successful acquisition. I totally agree.
  - milkytron 5y ago
    > I don't think the Reddit transition has gone very well. I would agree, although I do not think it has been particularly bad either. If they had broken apps the enhance reddit and removed old.reddit.com, then I would think otherwise. For the most part, I am still able to use the site as I have since 2011.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      To me, and I'm in the same scenario as you, that's mostly bad. old.reddit.com isn't going to last, is it?
      - bhaak 5y ago
        For what it's worth, even i.reddit.com aka reddit.com/.compact is still working.
- thefz 5y ago
  Yes and no. Article comment can be toxic downvote brigades to anyone who does not adhere to the hive's opinion and Ars is a mala fide Apple boot licker to the bone. Ars forums have gone to hell in this regard.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Not sure the fourms are caused by acquisition. I do see the UX experience being more thick, less favorable signal to noise happening due to acquisition. There may be editorial conflicts of interest too. I do not notice at present.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    If you don't like downvotes then make your own subreddit and attract like opinions. I personally don't think posts should be voted more negative than -1.
    - thefz 5y ago
      That's really mature, bravo.
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  If you ever want to see thee Ars community dogpile on a certain topic, read any article on cryptocurrencies. You will get the following comments at the top of the heap: Crypto means I can't buy a graphics card Crypto is a ponzi scheme and should be banned It is immoral to own Bitcoin, and governments should punish people who do Would you like to buy my new XCoin ha ha ha. Elon Musk is amazing, but this crypto thing makes me a little unhappy with him. Ad nauseum. I have been visiting that site less and less, because I think the audience has become an echo chamber.
  - phist_mcgee 5y ago
    I think the downvotes on my comment show I have hit a nerve. I did not disagree with any of the points I listed, I am simply pointing out a fact. Downvoting this comment does disprove not my point. The downvotes without engaging with my post are what is wrong with commodified community participation (comment/post points); exactly what harms Stack Overflow in the long run.
    - panopticon 5y ago
      You posted a tangential rant disparaging the comment section of another website. The voting system is the most appropriate response to flamebait.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
skeeter2020 5y ago
>> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. I've been a part of a couple of these. This statement is somewhere on the spectrum of absolutely naive to willfully disingenuous. "Someone just paid 2 billion dollars to buy us, but they're not going to change anything, exert any influence or expect payback beyond what we've already been doing."
- spurgu 5y ago
  Naive indeed. I flew to meet a company we had just acquired and I personally promised them that nothing would change. Even though I believed it at the time of course it didn't pan out that way and to this day I regret saying that.
  - sulam 5y ago
    Wow, yeah, never say that. Even if you believe it's true, saying nothing will change is sort of like waving a red flag in front of the bull. Of course things will change over time, they always do!
    - GenerocUsername 5y ago
      Its like fixing the wifi router for your parents and then having them call you to complain that their emails now have a signature at the bottom... "I didnt do that", "Well, you were the last one to touch the internet"
      - monsieurbanana 5y ago
        Except that in this situation, you really did put the signature on those emails.
      - rightbyte 5y ago
        Well to be fair that is how my coworkers (and I) think too. The one with the latest commit get a ping when the top break.
- 5y ago
dredmorbius 5y ago
Reddit's managed that on their own.
pavel_lishin 5y ago
> Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Their current plan seems to be a race to the bottom; a new re-design for the default landing page that rewards infinite scroll over in-depth content. Meanwhile, the moderation tools are still garbage.
- chairmanwow1 5y ago
  Their app is 2x slower than their mobile site and their new mobile site is 4x slower than their old site. Why do these brands feel the need to make everything a fucking SPA.
  - jakub_g 5y ago
    Plus the constant nag to install the app on mobile, and sometimes even downright blocking access and "see in the app". (For now there's still "old." subdomain which works if you enable desktop emulation on mobile, but it can shut down any day).
    - swiley 5y ago
      The fact that "old." still works is a pretty strong indication that the new redesign is to ensure new users will tolerate manipulation while retaining a large portion of the old users. Looking at the ratio of old/new site users is probably a very powerful analytics tool for predicting ad revenue for a given subreddit.
      - zerocrates 5y ago
        In my occasional interactions on Reddit it seems a very large proportion of users are on the "new" Reddit, the mobile site, or an app. I'm sure it varies by community though (especially ones that heavily use custom CSS and things that don't work on the new site). Just as one example I can recall, you can do things that are kind of like "quote retweets" with the cross-post feature that don't really make sense on the old site (on "new Reddit" when you crosspost the original post/title are displayed in a little window so you'll see people make titles that are actually commenting on the original post and not on whatever the link actually is). On old Reddit these just show up as links to whatever the original post linked to, but with the "meta-commentary" title. More than once I've encountered one of these with confusion until a comment explained, or I thought to check the tab that shows where else the same link has been posted.
Chris2048 5y ago
> Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Reddit is simply dying a slow death. I wouldn't touch the place now.
will4274 5y ago
> Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. I would have said the exact opposite. The Reddit community was destroyed. People no longer recommend Reddit for interesting discussions or speak excitedly about its communities. Conde Nast monetized and changed Reddit, recouping their investment, and now it's hard to find people who have good things to say about it. Consider e.g. /r/darknetplan or similar topic focused subreddit a that were thriving in the early 2000s - all graveyards today. Those people are on Discord now.
- ssaturn 5y ago
  Where can I find links to these discord invites?
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet https://disboard.org/servers/tag/darknet
- jedberg 5y ago
  That subreddit was started after the acquisition. In fact, every subreddit was, because user created subreddits were paid for by Conde Nast. As was self posts and pretty much every major innovation. It was after they brought in outside investors that they were pressured to monetize.
- renewiltord 5y ago
  Reddit itself didn't exist in the early 2000s wtf is this /r/darknetplan itself is from late 2010 You're just bullshitting wtf These are verifiable facts (go to /r/darknetplan and cmd-f for "community for" and then select that text).
htrp 5y ago
> Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Ehhhh not so sure on that one.
Dah00n 5y ago
>Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. That.... is a very positive view of Reddit. I'd say everything on Reddit is way worse now and going downhill fast.
- lupire 5y ago
  That was after Conde Nast sold.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Also before. It isn't something new. I'm amazed it can still become worse but it does.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  No it isn't.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Are we really at YES NO YES NO discussion levels?
soheil 5y ago
> Stack Overflow is so good, and its fate is now entirely in the hands of the purchaser. I wonder how much of it is Google making it look good by providing laser-precise results for the vaguest search queries.
LegitShady 5y ago
>most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices ...at least until this purchase news died down a bit, and then we can get some managers in there to make new priorities and get some of the old ones out...
aiisjustanif 5y ago
> Conde Nast managed not to destroy Reddit after buying it. Now Bon Appetit on the other hand...
edgyquant 5y ago
>Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition For whom? For people who uses it since the beginning it isn’t even the same place anymore. It’s UX (and I’m not talking about the aesthetics of the new design, I don’t mind those) is legitimately the worst I’ve ever experienced and the quality of discussion has went down the drain. Even if you find a tightly controlled community dedicated to a topic you’re interested in it’s either one extreme to another or doesn’t last long. That doesn’t even get into the constant rolling out for Facebook-tier features that no Reddit user ever wanted. I stopped using Reddit last month after ~12 years and I’ve since realized I was getting nothing but regurgitated memes and anger from a dozen people replying to my every comment who aren’t even addressing what I was saying just arguing for arguments sake. It’s basically what Facebook groups were in 2016 at this point. I’m sure it’s a great acquisition for those who bought it, but for the old power users it’s anything but.
- teamspirit 5y ago
  old.reddit.com it's the only way to browse Reddit. Not sure for how long, but it's there. That way you don't have to deal with any of the new nonsense that has become Reddit.
  - twelvechairs 5y ago
    3rd party apps are a better experience than old.reddit.com to be honest. Rif, sync, boost, relay, etc.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      All of those are mobile-only though.
  - aerique 5y ago
    And for mobile stick ".compact" at the end.
- wokwokwok 5y ago
  > For whom? Well, most people right? Power users are by almost by definition an insignificant (but over represented in discussions and noise making) cohort right? If the platform keeps quality content, gets more users over time and maintains both a good DAU and RPU, then, well, what objective metric of success do you want to measure? Number of happy power users? I really think most people don't care about that metric. With SO it remains to be seen...; the power users there are the mods, and they contribute tangible value to the platform... but... you know, the writing is already on the wall. Whether this does it, or it was coming anyway, it's hard to say.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
> The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now. Says everyone who is involved in huge company acquisitions ever, and most of the time it does not hold true. The rest is common marketing talk. I'm certainly not saying it is impossible for that to be true, but such a statement itself does not hold any value.
m463 5y ago
> Reddit seems like an example of a successful acquisition. In relation to money, or to users? Reddit is awful now, forcing everyone to an app and privacy out the window

skeeter2020 5y ago

They'll double-down on the enterprise offer I would think. I don't think jobs was the money-maker they planned on, and the public individual site doesn't have a lot of revenue approaches that justify ~2B purchase price. I'm sure they original VCs made money but not sure it's their typical unicorn multiple.

ddingus 5y ago
Great take. You're very likely to be proven in that observation.

ethbr0 5y ago

"Log in to see 8 answers on Qu^H^HStack Overflow!"

ddingus 5y ago
Yes, could very well be that. However I wrote a bit of angst because maybe they'll be smart about it and this will be okay.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chadlavi 5y ago

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

jbb_hn 5y ago
Sadly, I think you probably nailed it. Back in the day, “experts exchange” was the place to get answers to questions, and look where they’re at. 2 billion dollars. That’s a LOT of money even by 2021 standards. You better believe the investors will be looking for their ROI.
- ping_pong 5y ago
  Experts exchange was NEVER the place to get answers. They just perfected the SEO so that Google would point to them first. But everything was behind paywalls and it was never useful.
  - jbb_hn 5y ago
    That wasn’t my experience, but I’m referring to the mid to late 90’s timeframe before “paywall” was even a thing.
quickthrower2 5y ago
SO is CC at the moment IIRC - time to download it all and stick the historic stuff on a static site
- glaucon 5y ago
  Seems to be the case of now https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing . One of the more recent features added to SO was a timeline of activity and within the timeline you can see which license each the question is under. Here's an example for a random question https://stackoverflow.com/posts/49083680/timeline https://stackoverflow.com/posts/49083680/timeline . It's kind of weird that while the questions have a license declared the answer don't ... not sure what that's all about.
- 5y ago

Old_Thrashbarg 5y ago

I'll just be happy if they keep their Creative Commons licensing.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I think this will not happen immediately because people would panic and run. It will be more subtle and over a couple years, but it will fade away in time.

Ericson2314 5y ago

This is why we societal debt > equity, for ownership is like a debt that can never be paid back. I'm convinced this is a sensitivity to initial conditions phenomenon where if we hadn't transitioned to capitalism from feudalism, equity/ownership-like contracts would be laughed out of the room. "Perpetuity? C'mon!"

sys_64738 5y ago

Subs, ads or something else to monetize. You can't spend $1.8b and expect things to stay the same.

callamdelaney 5y ago

They already make money by having a job board (probably one of the best around for hiring devs, so probably costs a bomb) and they sell an internal version of SO for enterprise customers.

yougotrioted 5y ago

You saw it with their latest April fools joke - Premium Copy & Paste

wraptile 5y ago

StackOverflow was successfully expanding their service even before this purchase. I'd imagine stackoverflow jobs is a valuable area - sure it's not linkedin but it's still really good. SO also has really strong community following so there's always room for easy expanding. It's not about the QA area but other areas that surround it. There are a lot of ways to integrate products to QA part of the web - you already see "Python jobs" on python questions which I'd imagine should work really well!

whatatita 5y ago
I'd imagine Stackoverflow for Teams will be a big part of it too. We use it a t work and I'm sure lots of big enterprises would be happy to pay good money to build in-house QA and knowledge sharing.

jope12 5y ago

The whole point of creating Stack Overflow was to not have subscription access like Experts Exchange. Doing that would be suicide for SO.

quickthrower2 5y ago
That was a long time ago. SO has the network effects to pull this off
- toyg 5y ago
  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.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    SO is already cloned - every few months another new SO content farm comes along and clogs up the Google search results.

z0ltan 5y ago

Asking the right questions indeed.

ComodoHacker 5y ago

On the other hand, it could lead to a decline of infamous "SO programming style" which is not that bad.

dalmo3 5y ago

>I expect this to go like Reddit has "Download the app to see the answers!"

russellendicott 5y ago

I wonder if these acquisitions are like the new art collections of the super wealthy.

ppezaris 5y ago

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 ;)

prepend 5y ago
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.
- ppezaris 5y ago
  Our company had just transitioned from social networking to social commerce, and was starting to build out features like a shopping cart, product listings, etc. So the valuation was mostly hand-waiving based on the fact that we were the most recognized e-commerce brand in the region, despite not really being an e-commerce business yet. We were doing about half a billion in annual GMV but none of it monetized yet.