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0 pointstravisjungroth4y ago0 comments

> Sure, GH lags SO considerably on the size of the knowledge base, but I don't think that's very important since, due to the rapid pace of tech, content rapidly loses value with age (consider all of the jquery or flash content, or content pertaining to old versions of libraries or frameworks).

This is a weakness of SO and really the whole knowledge base business model (Q&A or not). You think you're building up this network-effect moat. "We have the best question-askers, answer-givers and answered questions. So everyone comes here!"

But, knowledge goes stale. "How do you X in JS?" is different than it was 10 years ago. People don't want a historical archive of how it was 10 years ago, they want to know today!

Then, like you say, GitHub brings in a whole new weird angle. Why ask on some other site when I have a spot where the maintainers and users hang out? Since my loyalty to SO is approximately zero, I'm just as likely to click on the Google result that takes me to GitHub if it looks more promising.

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joelbluminator4y ago

> Since my loyalty to SO is approximately zero

That's you though. It's not about loyalty, it's about Stackoverflow almost becoming a verb like Google. Many many people are used to using it, it's brand is very powerful. I don't see some competing tool stealing lots of mind share. Btw the thing about talking to maintainers directly is already done on small communities on discuss pages (ElixirForum for instance), on Discord, IRC and many other channels. None of it actually hurt SO.

gm3dmo4y ago

TomTom and BlackBerry had great brands, marketing and great software stacks. I still correct the google maps voice when it tells me to take the third exit on the roundabout. It’s “roundabound”. The people who ran those companies didn’t see anybody stealing their businesses either. Yet they are well and truly gone.

https://youtu.be/ATulnxruvhQ

chipotle_coyote4y ago

> I still correct the google maps voice when it tells me to take the third exit on the roundabout. It’s “roundabound”.

If it's saying "roundabout," I hope you're not correcting it to "roundabound," because "roundabout" is the correct word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout

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joelbluminator4y ago

Not sure TomTom had as dominant a brand for navigation as Stackoverflow has for Q&A. Stackoverflow is pretty much alone in this space still which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

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bredren4y ago

Brand is not a moat.

joelbluminator4y ago

How do you define a moat? For me it's anything that gives a company an advantage over it's competitors. It can be patents, tech, but also brands. Take Coca Cola for example. Now obviously it has a moat right? Where is this moat coming from then? If you think about it it's mostly the brand, not anything to do with taste. Same can be said about different beers or about Nike, Levi's, Apple (arguably) etc etc.

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throwaway8943454y ago

I think it's perhaps a little clearer to frame it this way:

SO has a network effect moat, not a corpus-size moat (I don't know that SO was ever thinking the size of its corpus would stave off competitors--they probably were correctly assuming that their user-base was their moat). The network-effect moat keeps the rate-of-change of the corpus higher than competitors, which is where the value is (not the size of the corpus). This moat has held up really well apart from (maybe) GH Discussions, which seems (to me) likely to succeed because GH has a similarly large network of experts.

travisjungrothOP4y ago

We agree on the corpus-size not being a moat, and maybe SO does themselves.

More directly, I question StackOverflow's network effect. Compare it to Craigslist, IMO the best example of network effects ever. It is their sheer size that has entrenched them. They're also not vulnerable to groups moving to another platform (rise and fall of everything from AIM to Snapchat).

I don't actually search StackOverflow. I end up there through Google. If Google starts pointing me somewhere else, or the search previews start looking better for somewhere else, I'm going there. It's not like if I try to sell a single bag of concrete on anywhere but craigslist, which would end in failure.

I'm sure in the M&A docs there was some disclosure like "75% of our traffic comes through Google. If Google started directing people to other sites, that would have a material impact on our business."

Shorel4y ago

SO has a SEO moat.

As soon as the answers I need start appearing in some other site, I will use the new site.

Shorel4y ago

> But, knowledge goes stale. "How do you X in JS?" is different than it was 10 years ago. People don't want a historical archive of how it was 10 years ago, they want to know today!

I want both! With commentary!

And SO is particularly hostile to this, with their "duplicated question" giving canonical status to obsolete answers.

travisjungrothOP4y ago

Good point. When I wrote that comment I was imagining the value of something like Datomic, which could let you see the result of a query at any point in time. In 2014, how did someone answer this question?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointstravisjungroth4y ago0 comments

But, knowledge goes stale. "How do you X in JS?" is different than it was 10 years ago. People don't want a historical archive of how it was 10 years ago, they want to know today!

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joelbluminator4y ago

> Since my loyalty to SO is approximately zero

gm3dmo4y ago

https://youtu.be/ATulnxruvhQ

chipotle_coyote4y ago

> I still correct the google maps voice when it tells me to take the third exit on the roundabout. It’s “roundabound”.

If it's saying "roundabout," I hope you're not correcting it to "roundabound," because "roundabout" is the correct word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout

1 more reply

joelbluminator4y ago

Not sure TomTom had as dominant a brand for navigation as Stackoverflow has for Q&A. Stackoverflow is pretty much alone in this space still which is pretty amazing when you think about it.

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bredren4y ago

Brand is not a moat.

joelbluminator4y ago

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throwaway8943454y ago

I think it's perhaps a little clearer to frame it this way:

travisjungrothOP4y ago

We agree on the corpus-size not being a moat, and maybe SO does themselves.

Shorel4y ago

SO has a SEO moat.

As soon as the answers I need start appearing in some other site, I will use the new site.

Shorel4y ago

> But, knowledge goes stale. "How do you X in JS?" is different than it was 10 years ago. People don't want a historical archive of how it was 10 years ago, they want to know today!

I want both! With commentary!

And SO is particularly hostile to this, with their "duplicated question" giving canonical status to obsolete answers.

travisjungrothOP4y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse