
My interview with Joel Spolsky on why Stack Exchange didn't work - AndrewWarner
http://mixergy.com/stack-exchange-joel-spolsky-interview/
======
AndrewWarner
Here are some of my notes:

\- It's hard to get a community going, and many of the sites what used SE
couldn't do it.

\- Joel says charging was an impediment.

\- Building on someone else's platform is like picking up pennies in front of
a steamroller. Businesses that were built on SE will have to find a new
platform (meta.stackexchange.com has some good threads on that.)

\- Joel raised money, but isn't ready to announce from whom or how much.

\- Only 20-40 SE sites had any significant traffic.

~~~
patio11
_Building on someone else's platform is like picking up pennies in front of a
steamroller._

I largely agree with this, and it is one of the reasons I don't do iDevice
development, but I despair about changing it. We're all ultimately on someone
else's platform these days: even those of us on the wild free Internet are,
essentially, at the mercy of Google.

~~~
runevault
This is true but at least there are mild forms of other discoverability
forming between facebook, twitter, etc due to link sharing/grassroots/etc.
Still have to get those early users but there are ways to do it, the going is
just a hundred billion times slower.

The difference is platforms like iPhone or even Facebook (pretty sure, I don't
use that devilspawn site) is they can cut you off entirely if you tie yourself
to them entirely.

------
brandon272
Mixergy interview suggestion: Andrew, as part of your format, your face is
visible for 50% of the interview. Trouble is, you always look like you're
sitting in a dark storage closet. Get a better webcam, or at least orient your
desk toward a window so that your environment looks brighter! :)

~~~
rdl
In general I think the video adds nothing to the Mixergy interviews -- I wish
there were a way to subscribe to mp3 only.

Some kind of interview + screencast/demo would be vastly more interesting, but
harder or impossible to do live.

I also appreciate the snowball microphone Andrew bought, and wish his guests
had similar quality setups (a few have, many have not). It would also be nice
to use a better audio codec and better buffering.

~~~
dugmartin
Here is the mp3 only feed:

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mixergy-main-podcast>

its also on iTunes

~~~
rdl
Thank you! I love mixergy; it's probably my third favorite online news source
after hn and news.google.com; it just beats out economist and quora.

------
richardburton
A friend of mine launched a hosted service that allows people to build their
own Q&A site for free. It's called QHub. Like any blog or forum it requires a
lot of work to get the community built up but it's not impossible. I guess it
all depends on the passion around that niche. <http://www.qhub.com>

------
hristov
Wow, it already did not work??? It seems it was only yesterday that Joel
announced he would be raising money for it. Internet time is fast indeed.

~~~
chrisboesing
Joel and Jeff wanted to raise money for StackOverflow, not for StackExchange.
But maybe the VCs couldn't see the value in having three site and licensing
the software to another company(Fog Creek), so the obvious way was to fold
StackExchange into the StackOverflow company. I think only time will tell if
this was the right decision.

~~~
rgoddard
No. They successfully raised money for StackExchange. That is part of the
reason for the change. Here is the post from the blog explaining the change.
[http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-
exchange-...](http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0)

~~~
chrisboesing
I meant, that the VCs didn't gave them the money for the old style of
StackExchange sites. Before this change the StackExchange plattform was
licensed from StackOverflow and operated by Fog Creek.

I guess the questions that now comes up is:

Did they make the change because they raised money and are now able to do
this, or have they changed it because this was the only way to raise money?

------
zacharydanger
Andrew, would an RSS feed with mp3 enclosures kill you?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
It is easier to get people motivated with honey than vinegar.

~~~
AndrewWarner
Thanks. As dougmartin points out above, it already exists. (He links to it
above.)

I'm also on iTunes with both a video and audio feed.

~~~
zacharydanger
Thanks, is this linked from your main site somewhere? I couldn't find it last
night.

