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-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.
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."
They don't expect any massive changes in revenue with the companies they acquire. They're willing to hire and invest in revamping/improving their products. Their goal is stable revenue by making customers happy enough to keep paying the maintenance.
They seem to be doing OK with that business model.
I won't say this approach turned out bad for Berkshire or Mr. Buffett personally.
There definitely are companies that will buy something like this to operate it essentially as an annuity.
The risk to the employees there is if SO essentially becomes done and the owners want to put it in maintenance mode and operate it as a run-out.
Also, it's been 12 years. There's probably a bunch of employees that would like some liquidity.
Why buying a company if you don’t want to make any change? Investment firms make profits by buying low and selling high, and it is hard to sell higher than the purchase price if things are kept the way it is.
To collect its revenue.
because it keeps printing money which you can use to acquire other companies. That is what Buffett does.
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.
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.
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.
When reddit recapitalized is when all the monetization stuff really started. Once they brought in outside investors and had people to answer to.
That.... is a very positive view of Reddit. I'd say everything on Reddit is way worse now and going downhill fast.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wonder how much of it is Google making it look good by providing laser-precise results for the vaguest search queries.
Reddit is simply dying a slow death. I wouldn't touch the place now.
...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...
Ehhhh not so sure on that one.
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.
It was after they brought in outside investors that they were pressured to monetize.
/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).
In relation to money, or to users?
Reddit is awful now, forcing everyone to an app and privacy out the window
Now Bon Appetit on the other hand...
