Slashdot Mirror

We can use the blackholes generated by the super sized collider to wipe out beta once and for all.

No need. It's already approaching implosion... site traffic has been cut by a third.

Really? Slashdot users have alexa malware?

We can use the blackholes generated by the super sized collider to wipe out beta once and for all.

No need. It's already approaching implosion... site traffic has been cut by a third.

Also, has someone volunteered to put up a slashcott update site (maybe with statistics on how well/poorly the site is doing during the blockade?)

Yup. falling like a rock.

This is what I'm loading next week: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org

Why in Odin's name would a company buy a site whose user base was historically so anti M$ and expect that they could make money from it by changing it to a M$/advertising oriented site. It reeks of affluenza enhanced megalomania.

Because sites like Slashdot were VERY influential in communicating public opinion on just how bad Vista was.

Microsoft recognized that, and engaged Waggener Edstrom and Burson-Marsteller to manage Social Media Marketing (SMM) for Windows 7 onwards. They used huge numbers of sock-puppet teams to quash any suggestion that Microsoft products were not stable or optimum in their roles. As well as promoting Microsoft, they heavily attacked competitors like Firefox, Google, Linux, Libre Office, Android etc. Any posting of FOSS or alternative products attracted a storm of FUD talking points that made it impossible to have a rational discussion.

Because the discussions became so polluted with marketers, most of Slashdot's readership left the site in the years between the Windows 7 release and now. The marketers have stayed though, and still post and moderate to present as rosy a view of their sponsors proprietary products as possible, while spewing FUD about Open Source. If you look at Slashdot's current demographic, most visitors are from call-centers in Mumbai and Pune in IndiaMumbai and Pune in India. They rarely contribute directly to discussions, but copy/paste/post the SMM talking points at every opportunity and moderate their partners into visibility and competitors to oblivion.

Dice gets most of their income from companies like Microsoft, Apple etc who pay for their products to receive favorable and frequent attention.

According to Alexa Slashdot is most popular in India. Is that really true? Most people here seem to be American.

If anything, Facebook will contract to an identity service provider used by web sites such as Answers.com and The Huffington Post to verify that each account is associated to one real person.

It might do that, but even teens are starting to realize that Facebook provides way too much information to be uses as an identity service provider.

Still THIS particular study seems a bit flaky, because it was done by looking for the frequency that "Facebook" appears in Google searches (which presumably includes simply entering "facebook.com" in the Chrome address bar, which some people still insist results in a search.)

With Facebook ALREADY being the home page of the addicted, and with a Facebook app on just about every mobile device, not many people have to search for Facebook, as it is already at their fingertips. According to Alexa statistics, 99.28% of visitors arrive directly at the site, and only 7.7% arrived from Google. This just screams "Browser Home Page".

Decline in search results might not be indicative of decline in usage. (Unfortunately).

#1 google.com
#2 facebook.com
#3 youtube.com

http://www.alexa.com/topsites

http://www.alexa.com/topsites

And they're down to 1.1% of all web servers, all FreeBSD. From the list of "Popular websites using FreeBSD" only one is in Alexa's top 500 and that's php.net. The Alexa rankings:

php.net: 229
turbobit.net: 557
jvzoo.com: 771
cpanel.net: 1096
neoseeker.com: 5488
starpulse.co: 5818
salespider.com: 4710
weblancer.net: 5125
extranetinvestment.com: 5834
msi.com: 6702

It is literally less than a handful (the top four) that means BSD even still has a presence and 80% of that is probably just one site. I guess BSD code is lots of places like in OS X and embedded and routers and whatnot but BSD is practically dead as a server (cue and queue the Netcraft and Monty Python jokes, please take a number). Who, at this point, would be interested in building a new network stack for BSD? I guess Juniper would since they use it for Junos, but honestly not that many others...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Climate_Depot
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com
both are highly known as clime change deniers they are not reputable as you claim.

most real research is paywalled and/or sells books to fund their research above whatever grants they get. it is how academia works these are feel good stories for republicans to seed disinformation, as it takes all blame away from them.

even if the global warming is a result of the sun fusing higher density particles and not burning of fuels while deforestation there is still merit in finding ways to slow global warming. it's not 'shit we better burn all the coal we can before it all ignights and screws humanity'

the 50 people using twitter...

... says a guy on slashdot (alexa rank 2083) about twitter (alexa rank 11).

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org

the 50 people using twitter...

... says a guy on slashdot (alexa rank 2083) about twitter (alexa rank 11).

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/twitter.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org

Here is a (rough, imperfect, insert-your-own-caveat-here) list of popular websites. Tumblr is #31.

Facebook has some big problems:

• Facebook traffic peaked in mid-2012.
• Facebook profits peaked in 2011.
• Facebook is no longer "cool".

Social just isn't that big a business. Facebook made only $53 million in profit last year, on $5 billion in revenue. (Way down due to some dumb acquisitions. They did better in 2011.) Despite all the noise it makes, Facebook is small compared to Dell or Google or Microsoft or HP or Oracle. VMware and Adobe have revenue roughly comparable to Facebook.

Facebook hasn't had that revenue for long, either. Social networks have a short lifespan. AOL, Geocities, Orkut, Friendster, Myspace... the list of once-big social networks is long. It's hard to make money in "social". Blast out too many ads and users leave. That's what killed Myspace.

Facebook is desperately trying to develop something that will make them cool again, or some way to get people to swallow more ads. All-night hacking sessions probably won't help. They've been acquiring other companies, but that may not help either. Buying Instagram is where their 2012 profits went. Instagram is cool, but not profitable. This year, they bought Hot Studio, a San Francisco design house whose mantra is "build brand loyalty first and ask for payment later". That's so late-1990s first dot-com boom.

Still in top 2000 and doesn't seem like plunging down to me.

leaving only zealots as people with half a clue leave the site.

Well, yeah, you're still here, for one.

Bing is the 28th most visited website in Iran. Google and Yahoo are the two highest.

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/IR

And I see the website I created a few years ago stands at 13th. I was forced to sell it for $4000 (with 50,000 members) because I was fearing they might block it and I get nothing. Last year a company wanted to buy it from current owners for $7 million (with 1.2 million members).

Btw I am struggling to earn money to finish my PhD in another country now.

Correlation != causation, I know, but check these two graphs (and note popularity and top search word for second one).

Alexa has a better list. Top 1 Million websites, and you can download the csv file too.

the PE ratio is still 60

Right. As the value investment community has been saying since before the IPO, based on earnings, Facebook is worth maybe $6 per share.

Facebook traffic climbed steadily until mid-2011, but has been more or less flat for the last year. Revenue is down. The growth phase is over.

And that's the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that Facebook is pulling a Myspace. Facebook is trying to increase revenue per user by showing more and bigger ads. That didn't work out well for Myspace or Yahoo.

Social networks are probably going to move to mobile devices, and Facebook has no clue how to make money in mobile. They even said that in their prospectus.

That's because the numbers from Compete do not correspond to reality. Compete.com is tracking some preselected panel of people, which in no way could represent the entire site usage. And then they stretch and inflate that data, and call it the "site profile".

For the reference, here's another such Google+ profile, from Alexa, which shows no "dramatic growth" whatsoever:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/plus.google.com

Bullshit. There are no coincidences on the comment section of a top 1000 trafficked site in the US.

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

OR on the whole digg users have alexa spyware installed, but slashdot users don't?

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

OR on the whole digg users have alexa spyware installed, but slashdot users don't?

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

But it's dead as a source of important news. It's an aggregator along with the rest - nothing special about it. Furthermore, as a forum it is basically as useful as HuffPo except without the scoops.

Meanwhile, people still link to slashdot, and the comments here are still +1 Informative that I don't see elsewhere. If you want digg, you might as well go reddit and get the AMA and other features that make that site digg but better.

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

But it's dead as a source of important news. It's an aggregator along with the rest - nothing special about it. Furthermore, as a forum it is basically as useful as HuffPo except without the scoops.

Meanwhile, people still link to slashdot, and the comments here are still +1 Informative that I don't see elsewhere. If you want digg, you might as well go reddit and get the AMA and other features that make that site digg but better.

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com

Yahoo! is targeted to mainstream, normal people, so perhaps you are not in that demographic. yahoo.com is easily in the top-10 of highest-traffic websites in the world.

• Ranked #3 by Google as of July 2011
• Ranked #4 by Alexa

I said successfull... that site has an alexa rank of 2.3m. Judging from the sites I run, 250k is about 1250-2000 visitors a day. So I can only imagine what 2.3m is in visitors.

Also no-one needs TPB to distribute their personally created music.. Even if your band can't afford the miniscule hosting fees you can just host the torrent file; the whole point of bittorrent is it doesn't need sites like TPB.

Nobody needs anything in this world but food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. The point is, people use The Pirate Bay to distribute legitimately, the number of hits that it gets (according to Alexa, the 206th most visited site in the world) make it worthwhile to put things there for distribution.

Just because you'd rather throw the baby out with the bathwater doesn't mean the rest of us want to. You don't think the RIAA would cream their jeans if they could just stop all music sharing on the internet, legit or not? You don't think they would abuse their power if given the chance? Come on. They themselves have gotten busted for the same shit.

Wikipedia is a top ten website in the world (see: http://www.alexa.com/topsites ).

Taking their time is due diligence.

unless they are planning on a class action law suit, otherwise i bet all the uploaders & downloders of Megaupload have moved on to using other services that basically do the same thing,

Yes, they have:

http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=1m&u=megaupload.com&&u=thepiratebay.org&u=mediafire.com&u=rapidshare.com&u=turbobit.net&

Not to split hairs, but Reddit is significantly more popular than Slashdot is according to Alexa.

Granted, Alexa isn't the end-all-be-all, but it is a fairly useful metric, and straight popularity isn't a particularly good indicator of quality.

Not to split hairs, but Reddit is significantly more popular than Slashdot is according to Alexa.

Granted, Alexa isn't the end-all-be-all, but it is a fairly useful metric, and straight popularity isn't a particularly good indicator of quality.

Typically employees can't sell their shares until at least six months post-IPO.

The SEC required a 2-year wait until the early 1990s. Which is partly why IPOs that ran way up after the IPO and then crashed were so popular during the original dot-com boom.

How much is Facebook really worth, anyway? Let's look at the numbers. Facebook revenue for 2010 was $1.86 billion. Goldman Sachs, which makes a private market in Facebook stock, sent a report to their investors indicating Facebook earned $355 million in the first 9 months of 2010. That would be $473 million for the year, for a 25% profit margin. Of course, those are unaudited numbers. When the SEC filings take place for an IPO, they may decrease as accounting gimmicks are disclosed and discounted.

The next question is, do we value Facebook as a growth company or an ongoing company? Let's look at Facebook's traffic stats. Traffic went up steadily until mid-2011, when it peaked. (Before Google+ started, incidentally.) It's been down a bit since then. So Facebook may have maxed out and started on its decline, like every other social network from AOL to Myspace did. There probably isn't a lot of growth left. Is there anyone not on Facebook who wants in?

OK, what's a company with $473 million in annual revenue worth? Google's price/earnings ratio is 21.39. Microsoft, 9.34. IBM, 12.69. Netflix 16.11. AOL 26.43. Yahoo 19.51. IAC (Ask's parent) 18.27. So we can say that the market is at best valuing mature Internet companies around 20x earnings.

That gives Facebook a valuation around $9 billion.

Even that may be optimistic. That assumes Facebook's user base doesn't shrink. Remember when Myspace was on top? This is Myspace on the way down. To earn that $9 billion valuation, Facebook has to maintain its current size and profitability for 20 years. Does anybody think that will happen?

(How many people here remember when one of the founders of Slashdot was asking on here what to do with his money when VA Linux, the parent of Slashdot, went public in 1999? They had the biggest first-day runup after an IPO ever. The stock hit $239 on the first day, and then went into a screaming dive. Six months later it was around $40. Not as rich as he thought. By 2002, it had dropped to $0.54. The stock is still trading as GKNT, formerly LNUX. Here's the chart.)

Typically employees can't sell their shares until at least six months post-IPO.

The SEC required a 2-year wait until the early 1990s. Which is partly why IPOs that ran way up after the IPO and then crashed were so popular during the original dot-com boom.

How much is Facebook really worth, anyway? Let's look at the numbers. Facebook revenue for 2010 was $1.86 billion. Goldman Sachs, which makes a private market in Facebook stock, sent a report to their investors indicating Facebook earned $355 million in the first 9 months of 2010. That would be $473 million for the year, for a 25% profit margin. Of course, those are unaudited numbers. When the SEC filings take place for an IPO, they may decrease as accounting gimmicks are disclosed and discounted.

The next question is, do we value Facebook as a growth company or an ongoing company? Let's look at Facebook's traffic stats. Traffic went up steadily until mid-2011, when it peaked. (Before Google+ started, incidentally.) It's been down a bit since then. So Facebook may have maxed out and started on its decline, like every other social network from AOL to Myspace did. There probably isn't a lot of growth left. Is there anyone not on Facebook who wants in?

OK, what's a company with $473 million in annual revenue worth? Google's price/earnings ratio is 21.39. Microsoft, 9.34. IBM, 12.69. Netflix 16.11. AOL 26.43. Yahoo 19.51. IAC (Ask's parent) 18.27. So we can say that the market is at best valuing mature Internet companies around 20x earnings.

That gives Facebook a valuation around $9 billion.

Even that may be optimistic. That assumes Facebook's user base doesn't shrink. Remember when Myspace was on top? This is Myspace on the way down. To earn that $9 billion valuation, Facebook has to maintain its current size and profitability for 20 years. Does anybody think that will happen?

(How many people here remember when one of the founders of Slashdot was asking on here what to do with his money when VA Linux, the parent of Slashdot, went public in 1999? They had the biggest first-day runup after an IPO ever. The stock hit $239 on the first day, and then went into a screaming dive. Six months later it was around $40. Not as rich as he thought. By 2002, it had dropped to $0.54. The stock is still trading as GKNT, formerly LNUX. Here's the chart.)

That is the sad news. They didn't gain enough visitors. If you look at their traffics and compare to other sites:

Gamepro: Alexa rank 6489

and competitors
IGN: Alexa rank 306
Gamespot: 412

They just didn't have a change. Personally, I've never heard about them either. If I had and they gave good content, I probably would.. but I never got there via any means. For the other internet age publications, I found Kotaku and RockPaperShotgun and they serve me gaming news just fine. As for TF2, Reddit does great job.

So, was there anything special Gamespy offered that the others didn't?

That is the sad news. They didn't gain enough visitors. If you look at their traffics and compare to other sites:

Gamepro: Alexa rank 6489

and competitors
IGN: Alexa rank 306
Gamespot: 412

They just didn't have a change. Personally, I've never heard about them either. If I had and they gave good content, I probably would.. but I never got there via any means. For the other internet age publications, I found Kotaku and RockPaperShotgun and they serve me gaming news just fine. As for TF2, Reddit does great job.

So, was there anything special Gamespy offered that the others didn't?

That is the sad news. They didn't gain enough visitors. If you look at their traffics and compare to other sites:

Gamepro: Alexa rank 6489

and competitors
IGN: Alexa rank 306
Gamespot: 412

They just didn't have a change. Personally, I've never heard about them either. If I had and they gave good content, I probably would.. but I never got there via any means. For the other internet age publications, I found Kotaku and RockPaperShotgun and they serve me gaming news just fine. As for TF2, Reddit does great job.

So, was there anything special Gamespy offered that the others didn't?

Facebook is the next company in trouble. Their Alexa reach peaked six months ago, before Google+ launched. That means Facebook is no longer a growth company, and they have to be valued strictly on profits, less their future potential for decline. They didn't IPO on the way up. Now it's too late for an inflated valuation.

Facebook's real financial figures aren't known. They haven't had to make the reports to the SEC that a public company has to make. Groupon (and AOL before them) inflated their profits by capitalizing and depreciating things they should have expensed. (AOL tried to account for those free AOL disks as capital expenses. That got them in trouble when it was noticed.)

On top of that, social networks have a limited life. AOL was once the leading social network. Remember Geocities? Orkut? Friendster? Yahoo 360? Myspace? Once the downward slide of a social network starts, it doesn't seem to stop.

Social networks also have a fundamental problem with advertising - it's an annoyance. Relevant ads that appear with search results are both useful for users and profitable for advertisers. Ads on social networks, where you go to connect with your friends, just get in the way. Social networks try to compensate for this by adding more and more ads. That killed Myspace, and Facebook seems to be on track to go the same way.

But Facebook has to IPO. They have to pay off the early-stage investors. This isn't going to be pretty.

Those who make it the 4th high traffic website of the world: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yahoo.com

And from the same website, the highest share of traffic comes from:

mail.yahoo.com 46.68%
search.yahoo.com 23.99%
yahoo.com 23.55%
login.yahoo.com 26.03%
news.yahoo.com 14.11%
answers.yahoo.com 14.15%
finance.yahoo.com 6.40%
fantasysports.yahoo.com 1.90%
sports.yahoo.com 5.82%
cn.yahoo.com 1.74%

According to Alexa ( http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thepiratebay.org ), it's the 79th busiest website in the world, visited by around 1.2% of internet users per day, which is an increase of about 1/3 over the last two years. Additionally the number of internet users as a whole has grown over the past two years. As a techie that reads Slashdot, you are likely ahead of the curve. The general population is still catching on to this torrent thing, and the other methods of getting content, which includes the legal ones like Netflix.

Who still uses Yahoo?

Why do people, especially on Slashdot, post the same "Who uses x", when a simple search.....

http://www.alexa.com/topsites

will show you that Yahoo is still the 4th most visited site on the Internet. Just because you don't use it, doesn't mean that no one does.

Aye, Alexa confirms it: the Pirate Bay has a global traffic rank of 89 and a US traffic rank of 97.

Slashdot, on the other hand, would be inaccessible at 1354 (globally) / 775 (US).

riaa.org * Alexa Traffic Rank: 122,822
comcast.net * Alexa Traffic Rank: 217
att.net * Alexa Traffic Rank: 6,440
verizon.net * Alexa Traffic Rank: 2,911
Doh!

Aye, Alexa confirms it: the Pirate Bay has a global traffic rank of 89 and a US traffic rank of 97.

Slashdot, on the other hand, would be inaccessible at 1354 (globally) / 775 (US).

I have some bad news(no, not pornographic or anything, just a site-ranking) for anybody to whom female enthusiasm for reading about male homosexual relationships is a surprise...

According to Comscore, Yahoo was the most visited site in the US for March. Alexa lists Yahoo as trailing behind Google and Facebook in the US.

Given that Comscore has also had issues with spyware in the past, I'm not sure I'd trust them. If you can find another source for that iOS vs Android data though, please share it. It would be earthshaking, if it were true.

I think it's called something like "integrity".

Integrity would come into play if the site was actually worth money.

Site Information for groklaw.net Alexa Traffic Rank: 71,614
United States Flag Traffic Rank in US: 17,844
Sites Linking In: 2,187

That's certainly worth money.

Sprint and Verizon don't use SIM cards and the latter's CDMA might not work with outside phones. You might just switch to one of those small local providers like Virgin Mobile or Boost which thrive on contractless service... I wouldn't switch till the day they e-mail you a new contract or something: no long-term guarantees that anyone is immune to mergers into the Big Four, including Big Four mergers like the threat of Sprint-TMobile just two weeks ago.

Even in recession times, the USA mentality loves the dunking of billions into mergers. Banks like Wachovia => WellsFargo, Merrill Lynch => Bank Of America. Lately, website "purity" has been low because the world's topsites are mostly USA-based and influenced by those same merger-loving companies: Google, Myspace (pre FB), Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, MSN, Bing and Facebook. We see absorptions the like of Yahoo Hotjobs => Monster.com, Youtube => Google and some recent possibility that Twitter might be acquired. There is really no place to run to live away from trouble anymore, so we gotta hand it to slashdot for being mostly an exception.

Slashdot is safe only till we merge with Digg. On that day we'll stop being known as basement virgins because we'll run for the hills.