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This makes no sense. Stackoverflow is a useful resource for programmers, but it's difficult to monetize. More than average users will have an ad blocker or oth

This makes no sense. Stackoverflow is a useful resource for programmers, but it's difficult to monetize. More than average users will have an ad blocker or otherwise mostly ignore ads. Not enough users would pay a subscription. My prediction would be they start to introduce obnoxious features to try get their 1.8B back and will annoy users away slowly. I have nothing against my prediction turning out wrong.

shagie 5y ago
My crystal ball says... * Improve channels from Stack Overflow to other properties - kind of like what they tried to do with the Developer Story, just with more reason to do it. ( https://www.pluralsight.com/newsroom/press-releases/pluralsight_and_stack_overflow_partner https://www.pluralsight.com/newsroom/press-releases/pluralsi... ) * There are a lot of eyeballs hitting SO, and a lot places to send people - https://www.prosus.com/companies https://www.prosus.com/companies . As they control the server, they can inline those ads more easily. * Job portal expansion. Supposedly this is profitable now, just not VC deals profitable. There are quite a few classified sites that Prosus has already. * Expand links to edtech - Skillsoft, Codecademy, Udemy to name a few of them. * Have the resources to spend on making that enterprise content product if it's not too late (Atlassian and Microsoft have been there for a while). People kept wanting a SO instance they could host locally. They were willing to pay a bit for it (but not the Big Tech prices that SO was supposedly selling it for). SO tried to do this with Teams, not sure how well that works/went. So, maybe they'll get that product finally made.
deleted 5y ago
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dbingham 5y ago
One possibility is that they invest heavily in Teams and Jobs. Those two both solve problems that many teams really struggle with and would be willing to pay a premium for tools to help them solve: documentation and hiring.
tester756 5y ago
by that logic hn is worthless too, yet I bet it created a lot of $ for yc

shagie 5y ago

My crystal ball says... * Improve channels from Stack Overflow to other properties - kind of like what they tried to do with the Developer Story, just with more reason to do it. ( https://www.pluralsight.com/newsroom/press-releases/pluralsight_and_stack_overflow_partner https://www.pluralsight.com/newsroom/press-releases/pluralsi... ) * There are a lot of eyeballs hitting SO, and a lot places to send people - https://www.prosus.com/companies https://www.prosus.com/companies . As they control the server, they can inline those ads more easily. * Job portal expansion. Supposedly this is profitable now, just not VC deals profitable. There are quite a few classified sites that Prosus has already. * Expand links to edtech - Skillsoft, Codecademy, Udemy to name a few of them. * Have the resources to spend on making that enterprise content product if it's not too late (Atlassian and Microsoft have been there for a while). People kept wanting a SO instance they could host locally. They were willing to pay a bit for it (but not the Big Tech prices that SO was supposedly selling it for). SO tried to do this with Teams, not sure how well that works/went. So, maybe they'll get that product finally made.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dbingham 5y ago

One possibility is that they invest heavily in Teams and Jobs. Those two both solve problems that many teams really struggle with and would be willing to pay a premium for tools to help them solve: documentation and hiring.

tester756 5y ago

by that logic hn is worthless too, yet I bet it created a lot of $ for yc