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Their strategy from the start was to use evergreen technical content to attract devs, to raise the visibility of their products with target customers. It dimin

by makk 5y ago

Their strategy from the start was to use evergreen technical content to attract devs, to raise the visibility of their products with target customers. It diminishes their early insights to cast this acquisition as merely part of a trend.

petercooper 5y ago
DO is smarter than most and has really nailed it with their content development program. When I say "trend" I'm not being negative, I'm speaking about broad industry movements which this deal can still be lumped in with, regardless of how smart or specific any individual deal or buyer is.
snorgle 5y ago
DigitalOcean’s strategy with evergreen technical content was to duplicate Linode’s strategy with evergreen technical content wholesale, down to individual articles. Linode Library, including a complete custom CMS and community engagement strategy to pay Linode users to help generate evergreen, was in place and driving conversions long before DigitalOcean was founded. They cribbed just about everything substantive from Linode documentation including the editorial structure that allows churning out content (install X on Y, basically, and enumerate administration verbs, Xs, Ys every time you deploy a new OS for users). I distinctly remember multiple Library articles getting rewritten about a week later and appearing on DO’s site with just enough distance to be unique, but it was clear that our work was on the screen while they wrote it based on document structure and technical approach (this was in the early “catch up” phase, roughly 2011-2012; it’s probably established enough now that this is no longer the case). More than once they not-so-subtly rewrote the technical approach to distinguish it and ended up breaking the instructions. They took verb ideas, they took X ideas, they took whole documents and shoved them in a blender with their systems. This is likely provable with Internet Archive but I’ve never bothered to look - I left Linode a decade ago. I wouldn’t have left this seemingly negative for no reason comment had you not identified DO’s documentation strategy as an early insight. It was an early insight, but absolutely, definitively not theirs. They raised the VC to get exposed to this audience and successfully presented nearly all of Linode’s business insights as their own, and it’s understandable that it seems that way if you didn’t follow Linode before DO. The first several years of DigitalOcean’s existence made it very clear they looked at Linode and said that, but with funding rounds. And that’s fine. They’ve done well. But let’s not attribute insights to their copies of things; their primary corporate insight all along was realizing Linode was handicapped with bootstrapped capital alone. And to give them credit, it was undeniably savvy to apply Linode’s successes to scaling DigitalOcean. It just means it’s not their ingenuity in any sense of the word.
- phphphphp 5y ago
  You're right that the Linode library existed prior to DigitalOcean's founding but DigitalOcean did innovate: they understood the value of technical writing as a conversion tool, and paid for it. Linode did not pay for articles until more recently, and so the Linode library was comparatively weak for a long, long time. The Linode library was helpful for customers, certainly, but it was never comparable to what DigitalOcean achieved with their content. You can argue that DO were able to achieve what they did because of raising money, but to suggest they copied Linode wholesale is revisionism. I won't get into the weeds of Linode vs. DigitalOcean but there were very important differences in approach, and eventually Linode was copying DO's ideas (for example, the introduction of low-resource low-cost servers, the design...). Linode was a trailblazer in the industry, for sure, but DigitalOcean wasn't just "Linode plus capital". edit: Linode started paying in 2014[1] after DigitalOcean[2] [1] https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/write-for-linode-get-paid/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/write-for-linode-get-paid... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20131111064358/https://www.digitalocean.com/write-for-digitalocean https://web.archive.org/web/20131111064358/https://www.digit...
  - snorgle2 5y ago
    I gave lengthy examples of copying that I observed firsthand. You don’t believe me, ask Sam K, whose work was diligently and routinely copied. Linode Library also credited customers for contributions publicly and financially since its launch in 2009. They expanded the program later to anyone interested to scale it beyond one-offs. The whole point of Linode Library was conversions so your distinguishing of DO’s “innovation” is baffling; what, you think we hired three people to write about nginx because it was fun? Of course Linode eventually copied DO back. That was the terms of the relationship established by DO. We were too busy dreaming of copying AWS at the time to see the threat. We ruled out $10 and lower Linodes again before DO was founded due to our support resources. DO forced that hand later (I assume, that was after I left). I am obviously biased having worked there (worth noting I left on awful terms), and I am aware of that, but some of what I’m saying is purely objective and, again, probably provable with study of IA. If you’re going to refute my first hand, lived experience and call it revisionism, you’ve proven my point of making this comment at all.

by makk 5y ago

petercooper 5y ago

DO is smarter than most and has really nailed it with their content development program. When I say "trend" I'm not being negative, I'm speaking about broad industry movements which this deal can still be lumped in with, regardless of how smart or specific any individual deal or buyer is.

snorgle 5y ago

DigitalOcean’s strategy with evergreen technical content was to duplicate Linode’s strategy with evergreen technical content wholesale, down to individual articles. Linode Library, including a complete custom CMS and community engagement strategy to pay Linode users to help generate evergreen, was in place and driving conversions long before DigitalOcean was founded. They cribbed just about everything substantive from Linode documentation including the editorial structure that allows churning out content (install X on Y, basically, and enumerate administration verbs, Xs, Ys every time you deploy a new OS for users). I distinctly remember multiple Library articles getting rewritten about a week later and appearing on DO’s site with just enough distance to be unique, but it was clear that our work was on the screen while they wrote it based on document structure and technical approach (this was in the early “catch up” phase, roughly 2011-2012; it’s probably established enough now that this is no longer the case). More than once they not-so-subtly rewrote the technical approach to distinguish it and ended up breaking the instructions. They took verb ideas, they took X ideas, they took whole documents and shoved them in a blender with their systems. This is likely provable with Internet Archive but I’ve never bothered to look - I left Linode a decade ago. I wouldn’t have left this seemingly negative for no reason comment had you not identified DO’s documentation strategy as an early insight. It was an early insight, but absolutely, definitively not theirs. They raised the VC to get exposed to this audience and successfully presented nearly all of Linode’s business insights as their own, and it’s understandable that it seems that way if you didn’t follow Linode before DO. The first several years of DigitalOcean’s existence made it very clear they looked at Linode and said that, but with funding rounds. And that’s fine. They’ve done well. But let’s not attribute insights to their copies of things; their primary corporate insight all along was realizing Linode was handicapped with bootstrapped capital alone. And to give them credit, it was undeniably savvy to apply Linode’s successes to scaling DigitalOcean. It just means it’s not their ingenuity in any sense of the word.

phphphphp 5y ago
You're right that the Linode library existed prior to DigitalOcean's founding but DigitalOcean did innovate: they understood the value of technical writing as a conversion tool, and paid for it. Linode did not pay for articles until more recently, and so the Linode library was comparatively weak for a long, long time. The Linode library was helpful for customers, certainly, but it was never comparable to what DigitalOcean achieved with their content. You can argue that DO were able to achieve what they did because of raising money, but to suggest they copied Linode wholesale is revisionism. I won't get into the weeds of Linode vs. DigitalOcean but there were very important differences in approach, and eventually Linode was copying DO's ideas (for example, the introduction of low-resource low-cost servers, the design...). Linode was a trailblazer in the industry, for sure, but DigitalOcean wasn't just "Linode plus capital". edit: Linode started paying in 2014[1] after DigitalOcean[2] [1] https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/write-for-linode-get-paid/ https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/write-for-linode-get-paid... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20131111064358/https://www.digitalocean.com/write-for-digitalocean https://web.archive.org/web/20131111064358/https://www.digit...
- snorgle2 5y ago
  I gave lengthy examples of copying that I observed firsthand. You don’t believe me, ask Sam K, whose work was diligently and routinely copied. Linode Library also credited customers for contributions publicly and financially since its launch in 2009. They expanded the program later to anyone interested to scale it beyond one-offs. The whole point of Linode Library was conversions so your distinguishing of DO’s “innovation” is baffling; what, you think we hired three people to write about nginx because it was fun? Of course Linode eventually copied DO back. That was the terms of the relationship established by DO. We were too busy dreaming of copying AWS at the time to see the threat. We ruled out $10 and lower Linodes again before DO was founded due to our support resources. DO forced that hand later (I assume, that was after I left). I am obviously biased having worked there (worth noting I left on awful terms), and I am aware of that, but some of what I’m saying is purely objective and, again, probably provable with study of IA. If you’re going to refute my first hand, lived experience and call it revisionism, you’ve proven my point of making this comment at all.