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Dice Buys Geeknet's Media Business, Including Slashdot, In $20M Deal

Posted by timothy on from the always-the-last-to-know dept.

wiredmikey writes with the press-release version of news that we'll probably be updating as more details trickle down to the editors: "Dice Holdings (Owner of job sites including Dice.com) reported this morning that it has acquired Geeknet's online media business, including Slashdot and SourceForge. 'We are very pleased to find a new home for our media business, providing a platform for the sites and our media teams to thrive," said Ken Langone, Chairman of Geeknet. 'With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek.' Dice Holdings acquired the business for $20 million in cash. In 2011, the online media properties generated $20 million in Revenues." The AP has a small piece with the news, too. Update: 09/18 16:16 GMT by T : Ars Technica has a story up as well.

7 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative

    *looks at Dice's News Page*

    *looks at Slashdot*

    *begins nervously wringing his hands*

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone by Soulskill · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is still pretty new to us, but we've been looking at this as a positive thing -- we were worried earlier that if we were rolled into a business that focused entirely on news, we'd be expected to conform to company standards -- see the Gawker sites, for example.

    2. Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone by somersault · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you RTFA, you'll see that GeekNet have sold on Slashdot, SourceForge and Freecode, while retaining ownership of ThinkGeek:

      Ken Langone, Chairman of Geeknet, added, "We are very pleased to find a new home for our media business, providing a platform for the sites and our media teams to thrive. With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek."

      --
      which is totally what she said
    3. Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Informative

      All too often, "standards" means pushing positive "stories" about advertisers, censoring any content from the public that might offend said advertisers, and generally turning your site into a boring shitfest that no traditional /. user would be caught dead on if Peter Jackson himself came down from geek heaven and offered them them a prop sword from LotR and a handjob in exchange for staying.

      --
      What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    4. Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Informative

      How important is Sourceforge, really? Aren't all the cool guys on GitHub by now?

  2. Re:And please, Mr. Geeknet by Soulskill · · Score: 5, Informative

    The media business part of Geeknet is being moved over as a whole. So, all of our projects and priorities are continuing unchanged. In fact, we just had a meeting about this, and the folks from Dice were very clear about not wanting to interfere with the community.

  3. Re:Care to Elaborate? by Soulskill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I'll answer what I can; we editors are not part of the decision-making process, so I first heard this news only a few hours ago myself. This is my reaction from what I've heard today from the higher-ups. Duress isn't a factor -- in fact, one of the quotes from the meeting I most liked was in response to a question about whether we were posting news of the announcement on Slashdot, and how the community would react. The Dice folks simply said, "Let them talk." I'm sitting in a conference room right now next to a gentleman from Dice, and he's just been curious what people are saying; hasn't suggested any comments or messaging at all.

    As far as being consumed by a bigger fish, keep in mind that Geeknet (aka SourceForge aka VA, etc) was a bigger fish itself. If you think about Geeknet's business, it was rather broadly spread. Slashdot's a news site, ThinkGeek's an e-commerce business, Sourceforge is its own thing. They have common roots, but they don't really go together. I've been aware of Dice, but not terribly familiar with it, but wouldn't you say its business would tend to fit Slashdot better than ThinkGeek?

    As far as the MySpace situation.. well, not all companies are alike, and not all companies see value in the same way. The crew currently running things is more concerned about the Slashdot user experience than some others have been in the past, and that's been a plus. Obviously, I can't see the future, so I don't know how it's all going to play out. But my initial impression is positive. I'm thrilled at the possibility of getting a bigger investment into Slashdot, both from an engineering perspective and an editorial perspective.