

StackExchange reaches 16 million users, 131% growth - gecko
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/state-of-the-stack-2010-a-message-from-your-ceo/

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gavingmiller
The StackExchange team did an exemplary job of pivoting the SE model[1] and I
think they've seen the success they have today because of that action. Had
they not pivoted, I think SE would have been associated with a lot of low
traffic, and bad Q/A websites.

Initially with SE you had to pay to setup your own SE site. As mentioned in
the post, they found that the sites were doing poorly without the critical
mass of people to answer questions. Creating Area 51 helped them objectively
measure topic interest, and allowed users to determine whether the site had
legs or not, and thusly validate whether the site was worth creating. Had they
not done this, I don't think we'd be reading about such success today.

[1]: [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/migration-of-
se-1-0-si...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/05/migration-of-
se-1-0-sites/)

~~~
phillco
They had the guts to say "this isn't working, we're going to throw it away and
start over". That was crucial.

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pavel_lishin
I really wish they hadn't balkanized into a billion sub-sites. I need to ask a
question about compiling a 32-bit library on a 64-bit system, so it'll work
with XAMPP's 32-bit Apache compile. Do I go to one of the web-dev ones? One of
the sysadmin sites? Is there one for compilers?

~~~
scorpion032
There are of-course grey areas, but the key is the community. They don't
optimize it for "where do I ask the question?". You could probably ask it in
Yahoo answers or Mahalo then, that pretend to answer it all in one place. Or
Quora.

The key is to create a community of people with common interest, where there
is enough interest (Area 51) and have them connected. Getting answers is a
side effect. They have nailed this part and you have to give it to them.

For what it is worth, questions that doesn't belong in a site are
automatically, and generally quickly moved.

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brm
I believe it says they grew to 16 million VISITORS not users? Did I miss
something?

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Jun8
[http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/15991/how-many-
users...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/15991/how-many-users-are-
there-on-stackoverflow)

This says that last August they had around 86K users, so by now they should
have around 100K. The huge visitor to user ratio is a sign of their success, I
think. (I'm assuming SO represents most of their traffic)

Edit: Wikipedia page says: "As of September 2010, Stack Overflow has about
243,000 registered users"

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ctekin
That SO answer was posted on Aug '09. So it wasn't last August.

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Jun8
Yep, my bad. So they went from ~86K in August 2009 to ~250K in September 2010.
That's impressive! I didn't realize SO had that many members.

~~~
smackfu
Maybe just people forgetting which OpenID login they used.

------
fourstar
While I'm not fond of the numerous sub niche sites they open, StackOverflow is
an excellent resource and has saved me a considerable amount of time when
waiting for an answer on freenode.

