Slashdot Mirror
Dice Buys Geeknet's Media Business, Including Slashdot, In $20M Deal
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.
*looks at Dice's News Page*
*looks at Slashdot*
*begins nervously wringing his hands*
My work here is dung.
As in the retail sales? That doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling for Slashdot...
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Are you telling me that Slashdot is worth less than a cheapy mp3 player full of songs? Sheesh! To Dice: if it ain't broken, don't "fix it".
I for one welcome our new Dice overlords.
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
Had to be said.
Did someone have a casino loss to pay off?
Dice,
Please preserve the old stories and comments at their current URLs instead of running over the place with a bulldozer like the acquirers of Digg did. Many of us have hundreds of bookmarks that we don't want to see broken.
Thanks,
Everyone
I hope Dice proves to be better corporate overlords than the ones that sent CmdrTaco packing.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Save us CmdrTaco, you're our only hope!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Already some discussion on this over at Hacker News.
Anyone know if Rob would want to take back control of Slashdot if we ran a Kickstarter to get it back in the hands of someone who gives a shit?
Not that I'm saying Dice will treat /. badly... but I don't have high hopes for innovation.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Dear Dice,
Take a look at the history of Digg to see what happens when you mess with a community site. You have a choice to make. If you screw it up, people will leave.
Dice Holdings has acquired the online media business of Geeknet. This includes such notable tech sites as Slashdot, SourceForge and Freecode.
The acquisition price is $20 million, which the companies say is the same amount the properties generated in revenue in 2011.
In case you're unfamiliar with the sites, Slashdot is a user-generated tech news site. You used to hear the term "slashdotted" a lot, when as site got so much traffic from the site that its servers crashed. There's actually a sizable Wikipedia entry about the "Slashdot Effect".
SourceForge is an open sources software site for developers, and Freecode is a large index of Linux, Unix and cross-platform software and mobile apps.
Slashdot gets over 5,300 comments a day and 3.7 million unique visitors per month. SourceForge gets 40 million unique monthly visitors, and about 80% of them are from outside of the United States, according to Geeknet. Freecode gets about 500,000 unique visitors per month.
"The acquisition of these premier technology sites fits squarely into our strategy of providing content and services that are important to tech professionals in their everyday work lives," said Dice Holdings Chairman, President and CEO Scot Melland. âoeThe SourceForge and Slashdot communities will enable our customers to reach millions of engaged tech professionals on a regular basis and significantly extends our company's reach into the global tech community.â
"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 Geeknet Chairman Ken Langone. "With this transaction completed, we will now focus our full attention on growing ThinkGeek."
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I for one welcome our new polyhedral overlords. May they smite our enemies with the pointyness of a d4 and bathe us in the glory of a d100
I honestly don't have a problem with Dice, they seem like a fine company. It's just that slashdot is the last place on the internet I still go for nerd news that isn't mostly crap. I wish it still had real humans behind it instead of a faceless corporation. *sigh*
This is still pretty new to us, but we've been looking at this as a positive thing
Hey, I mean, you'll have to forgive me if I can't discern whether you're saying that under duress or while you're busily shredding documents or while you're issuing cyanide capsules or if you're genuinely optimistic about the move. So if you have the time, I'd like to know what aspects of this make your statements genuine. As you noted with the Gawker thing, I get a little uptight about my small little things being bought up and consumed by bigger fish. The bigger the fish that eats you up, the more layers of direction come down upon you. People complain about comments being un-editable and static but I love that. It makes this feel permanent, it allows me to verbally pin people down, etc. But if Executive A five layers removed from you decides it needs to be his way, what are you gonna do? On top of that, how would you have handled the Microsoft source code and Scientology spats if there was someone with money looming over you reminding you of the stakes and telling you to back down?
-- 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.
Okay, fair enough. However, I know very little about Dice. And to counter your argument, an advertising company bought MySpace which used to be a social networking site. And now, surprise surprise, it's more ads than user created spaces. You can argue that MySpace was dead already. You can argue that some change had to be made. But I want to know why you feel safe to pick this out to be a plus and not a minus for my overall Slashdot addiction. How do I know Slashdot isn't going to become a vector tool to get eyeballs over to Dice's bread and butter jobs site?
If you have doubts or genuine concern, I'm not asking you to be the turkey with the long neck when farmer Dice comes around looking for his first meal so feel free to reply as Anonymous Coward. I mean, I'm not talking about my employer on web forums so I understand but your arguments should stand on their own -- sans Slashdot icon.
My work here is dung.
10 ) Consolidates Slashdot and Thinkgeek into ThinkSlash, you can moderate items but you also get promoted product placements under every +5 post.
9 ) Last answer on polls now always "Man I could use a new job".
8 ) All posts with word "Monster" auto-modded to -1.
7 ) User profile now includes mandatory job history and expertise fields.
6 ) Tired of too many Apple stories? Too bad.
5 ) Freed of need to bring in ad revenue because of Dicean sugar daddy, Slashdot now works full time on original goal - Cowboy Neal as first man on Mars.
4 ) Anyone with a five digit UID or lower gets to be a bit player in the next Dice.com SuperBowl commercial.
3 ) Troll posts now forwarded to employer to free up jobs for more highly moderated users.
2 ) Big plans for edgier SlashDot after future additional purchase of SuicideGirls.com
1) JOBS FOR EVERYONE!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
SlashDot, ThinkGeek, AND SourceForge? Man, that's about 1/2 my normal browsing. I agree trying to change stuff will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But I've seen a lot of dead geese in my time.
This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.
This site jumped the shark when it was renamed Slashdot from Dips and Chips :P
Seeing this story makes me think about SourceForge. That used to be a thing. Today it is no longer hip. It seems like GitHub is now the go-to location that SourceForge used to be.
It strikes me that GitHub is to SourceForge as Google is to Yahoo. SourceForge deserves some respect for coming first, but the experience is "heavy", less modern. Pages are full of images and ads and visual distraction. Page loads are generally slow from all that content. GitHub did to source code hosting what Google did to search interfaces in the 90s: they trimmed the fat. It has a very light feel and footprint. It doesn't get between you and the code. It has different ideas and goals about how to make money, which do not compromise the experience.
I guess GitHub had the benefit of coming later, thus not having all the baggage of what is now 2 decades of hosting projects. Still, seems like a missed opportunity for SourceForge.
Oh I'm sure: the days of Slashdot are still numbered. (FTFY).
This site died the first time it was sold. I go back to the year 1998 and I can tell you that Slashdot lost its "mojo" (or "jumped the shark" to use one of slashdot's old memes), a LONG time ago. Just the addition of the face***k link was proof of that.
Like everything on the Interwebs, /. is here today, gone yesterday.
God doesn't play with Dice.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I'm not totally sure what it means to sell them for 1 year's revenue
Buyouts and mergers are typically done as a multiple of some portion of the earnings or revenue of the company. It's a quick and dirty way to estimate the value of a company without doing a lot of math. Typical multiples for companies are between 0.8-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X annual EBITDA (earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization). The multiple is usually adjusted up or down depending on the prospects of the company, the industry it is in as well as the economic climate. Software companies might command a higher multiple than a bricks & mortar retailer. Comparing buyout multiples to historic trends is a good way to identify bubbles as well as gauge the economic climate.
A multiple of 1X annual revenue is a fairly typical price to pay for a company. Doesn't necessarily mean it is a good price but it is about what I would expect someone to pay. In short, I wouldn't read too much into the price paid.
Are we missing something? I'd love to buy an entrenched business for one year's worth of revenue...even if revenues were slowly declining.
Actually that's a fairly typical price for a buyout. Most buyouts are done as a percentage of revenue or EBITDA. Revenue multiples of around 1X annual earnings is a pretty typical price for a firm though it varies by industry, prospects and economic climate. Typical revenue multiples for any buyout is 0.8X-1.2X annual revenue or 3-5X EBITDA.
Remember that if you buy a company for its annual revenue, eventually you have to make that money back. If the profit of the company is say 10% of revenue it will take 10 years to recoup the investment.
I would presume that they would have had to pay more to get the geeknet holdings without slashdot.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
the folks from Dice were very clear about not wanting to interfere with the community.
This is exactly the thing I would expect a new owner who sincerely believed in leaving a good thing alone to say.
This is also exactly the thing I would expect a new owner who had other plans to say.
Only time, not words of reassurance, will reveal Slashdot's future.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
To Dice: if it ain't broken, don't "fix it".
That has never been the motto here. Why would it take hold now?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
just remember Dice: if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it
welcome our tumbly, six-sided overlords.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
On the flip side, perhaps this'll be the death knell for SlashBI.
that's company-wide, not for the media subset.
From the news piece on TechCrunch:
"Dice has been talking about building content and user engagement to be top of mind and more integral to professionals doing work, and if you think about SourceForge and Slashdot, it’s about user engagement to help you do your job... We don’t want to change the experience today. What will happen over time is that the Dice.com site is will operate more seamlessly connected to these sites. But the sites themselves will keep their look and feel and will run on their own... That absolutely includes editorial independence. We think that’s really key. We don’t profess to add much from an editorial standpoint. We will give the user bases on our sites and those the ability to interact with each other. Our goal here is to make them part of the overall tech and engineering experience at the company."
Translation: 'We are Borg. You will be assimilated.'
Damn. I'm gonna miss this place.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
1) Buy Geeknet
2) ? ? ?
3) Profit!
Now I am curious to learn about phase two...
I don't see any kind of integration beneficial to Slashdot readers. Warts and all, we are a community and any "integration" is an attempt to turn us into a commodity.
(Time to dig out this classic)
A long, long time ago \ I can still remember \ How the trollers used to make me smile \ And I knew if I had to boast \ That I could try to get first post \ And maybe I'd be happy for a while
But moderators made me shiver \ With every minus they'd deliver \ DoS scripts couldn't stop it \ They scored them all "Offtopic" \ I know that it's cheap crack they smoke \ And meta-moderation's broke \ At first I thought it was a joke \ The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
Bye, bye, MEEPTy, OOG, and Grits guy
Drove the Cruiser like some loser who starts posts with a *sigh*
Those Steve Woston posts that we all knew were a lie
Wonder what became of girls petrified?
What became of girls petrified?
--
Did you write a bunch of Perl? \ And did it make you want to hurl \ Feces at the Wall? \ Can you believe these lame-ass polls? \ Do you post big stretched-out assholes? \ Can you make the goatse.cx link not show? \ Well I know you think that Siggy sucked \ Will the real Bruce Perens please stand up?
The bots don't have a clue. \ Man, I dig those trolls from Shoe! \ I was a rabid Free Speech advocate \ With a Red Hat T-shirt and a Free Beer gut \ Bought my Sony laptop working Pizza Hut \ The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
It's been two years since the IPO \ And LNUX sinks to all-time lows \ But that's not how it used to be \ When Spiral showed how it was done \ Trolling as Jon Erikson \ Who worked for NPO Technologies \ Oh and while they tried to filter posts \ Somebody rooted Slashdot's host
"Crack Slashdot? That's absurd!" \ Better go change your password \ While JonKatz wrote a Hellmouth book \ By using posts he simply took \ And we flamed him till he was cooked \ The day that trolltalk died \ And we were singin....
-- Chorus --
10 grams. Inchfan. Didn't log out. Goddamn \ The mods will find the sid real soon, man \ You can't hide if you aren't AC \ Your bud (George here) tried BSD \ A dead Streetlawyer's tips were free \ And WIPO helped letsriot turn Nazi \ 70 made his percents up \ While 80md warned "liberals suck"
The moon does not exist \ It's just a liberal myth \ Oh and as Taco tried to take a nap \ We forced him to invoke bitchslaps \ Do you recall the flood of crap \ The day that trolltalk died? \ We started singin....
-- Chorus --
Oh and then we were wearing out "All your base" \ And started posting monospace \ The better for our penis birds \ So come on, be a zealot, be a dick \ You don't think Anne Marie's a chick? \ Because lying's all we do about HURD
So go and push for BSD \ And say GPL isn't free \ Slow down, cowboy! The limit \ Is one post every minute \ Now tell the right wing facist slime \ Infringing on Your Rights Online \ That they can't censor all the time \ The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus --
I met a troll they called The Rev \ And asked him if CD BREAK HEAD \ He said, "That's old. Get over it." \ And with all the courage I could muster \ "Imagine what a Beowulf cluster...." \ But it wasn't worth the trouble to submit \ The karma caps are just plain jive \ And everyone's moved to K5
The steelcage has grown rusted \ And Geekizoid is busted \ The three sites I don't see for weeks \ Segfault, kernel, Comp-u-geek \ Code is not art. This ain't Freshmeat \ The day that trolltalk died
-- Chorus
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20351&cid=2172299
... yeah, what ever.
a more important question:
will dice provide slashdot with an ipv6 address or not?
I've largely lurked for the past 15 years but /. is the first site I've visited each day for my entire adult life. This is a sad day for me and for all slashdotters. If they try any unified login bullshit or site enhancements I will die.
good luck to you guys.
Bye bye happiness. Hello....what, what is left!!! Hellooooo loneliness.
There's probably some scope for innovation - the codebase could probably do with a security audit or three, and/or a complete rewrite in a more intelligible language (Brainfuck, perhaps) or something respectable and powerful (AspectC++ or D would be the obvious choices there, you can then have it as a SOAP application rather than use the increasingly slow Apache server).
We also need more pink ponies. And cowbells. There is a distinct lack of pink ponies and cowbells.
As far as invention is concerned, there needs to be a complete rethink of the metamoderation idea (nobody uses it any more) and the firehose (which nobody ever used to begin with). Moderation abuse is commonplace, with trolls openly posting how they're abusing moderation to attack views contrary to their own and push agendas, so we need SOME sort of metamoderation, but clearly it needs to be a lot more effective or it's going to sit and rot like the existing system. The firehose, again, is overwhelmingly ignored. Users aren't using it to pre-screen stories for typos (and editors ignore the advice if they do), nor are they using it to encourage the sorts of stories wanted (with the result that those same users then whine about there never being any good stories). We need a replacement that people WANT to use.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why do I think this shirt will suddenly disappear from ThinkGeek's listings: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/9d0b/
Also, this: http://www.dorktower.com/2012/08/14/your-dice-dork-tower-14-08-12/
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.