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.

Comments

Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[eldavojohn]

*looks at Dice's News Page*

*looks at Slashdot*

*begins nervously wringing his hands*

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[radiumsoup]

the userbase of /. is so well entrenched, modifying the brand too much would surely kill it.

see: Gawker

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Soulskill]

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.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Anonymous Coward]

*looks at Dice's News Page*

*looks at Slashdot*

*begins nervously wringing his hands*

What's the worst they can do?

Hire editors?

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[crazyjj]

You'll know there's real trouble when they actually start censoring comments, instead of just allowing users to mod them. The day that Natalie Portman sex jokes, a racist comment claiming Apple is being run by "a bunch of niggers," or a good old-fashioned flamefest is replaced on /. with a bunch of "This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations" boilerplate is the day a lot of us leave Slashdot for good. Here's to hoping that day never comes.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Tharsman]

Oh I'm sure: the days of Slashdot are now numbered.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Jeng]

If they start censoring posts you can be sure there that the ability to post anonymously will also be taken away.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[lxs]

Has Netcraft confirmed it?

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Hatta]

I don't think they care about /. They care about ThinkGeek. I'm more worried about Sourceforge. The world could do with /. pretty easily, but Sourceforge serves an important function.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[somersault]

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."

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[AwesomeMcgee]

The worst they could do? Turn slashdot into a dice.com advertising board. Negative comments? Gone. Advertisements for "related job openings" on every article? Added. Users with lots of comments that have the word "java" in them? Your slashdot inboxes will be full with dice.com adverts.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[TWX]

You got some problem with Indonesia or something?

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[crazyjj]

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.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[nherm]

In 2012, war was begginng

Anonymous Coward (AC): What happen ?

Thimoty: Somebody set up us the bomb.

AC: We get signal.

Thimoty: What !

AC: Main screen turn on.

Thimoty: It’s you !!

Dice: This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[denis-The-menace]

See http://digg.com/

Uh-oh. It looks just like Dice.com's site!
We are so fucked!

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[reverseengineer]

According to Netcraft, it actually died 15 years ago.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then I'd be done. For years AC is the only way I've ever contributed to slashdot. And despite that I still get +5 Insightful mods from time-to-time.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[StikyPad]

Map usernames to dice accounts, via either coercion or subterfuge, to see who trolls Slashdot the most during working hours. ;)

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[samazon]

Which is unfortunately why print newspapers are going out of business left and right. You want the short story? I'm working as a GIS hack because I was kicked out of my school journalism program for writing an article about racism in the Greek system, left my first reporting job because my editor caved to an angry advertiser and allowed a retraction to be published that outright called me an incompetent reporter (incidentally, what he was referring to was my publication of a list of low-performing programs in a story about a series of budget cuts that specifically called for elimination of low-performing programs. Six months later, the programs were cut.) and the job I was offered after that vanished six months after I took it, because the investors in the newspaper decided they'd rather have a tax break than the small profits we made. There's no market for true and honest journalism in the world, and now I tell people which property is theirs so that they can sue their neighbors. At least /. is reflexive - it's only as good as what "we" put into it. For now.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[crazyjj]

It's also the only way to keep your karma from going in the toilet if you post something that goes against the prevailing wisdom (and we NEED those kind of posters on topics where groupthink tends to set in).

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[nitehawk214]

The worst they could do? Turn slashdot into a dice.com advertising board. Negative comments? Gone. Advertisements for "related job openings" on every article? Added. Users with lots of comments that have the word "java" in them? Your slashdot inboxes will be full with dice.com adverts.

I don't java what you mean.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[Eponymous Hero]

like if they start enforcing RTFA through cookies and google analytics event tracking. there'd be a worldwide riot

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[GNious]

Crap, don't have any Dice-points - Someone, roll Parent Post up!

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[samazon]

TL:DR

Bias: Lacking a neutral point of view.

A neutral presentation is the first thing you're taught when you study journalism. Even before the inverted pyramid structure. There is such a thing as ethics in reporting.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[UnknownSoldier]

Ah, to be young and naive and not have any credibility again.

The S/N ratio at /. has always been relatively higher then other sites. Sure we get our share of troll articles, but compared to crap over at Digg, or the circle-jerking at the main page of Reddit (the sub-reddits are [mostly] great), /. has consistently had an informed community. I don't see that anywhere else where so many geeks of manner of interested have come together.

Irony: An AC complaining about the lack of community, posting nothing of value!

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[kelemvor4]

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."

Right, which is why he's concerned for the future of SourceForge.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[ColdWetDog]

"Well enough"? That's a laugh. I can't leave a Slashdot story open on my netbook without it bringing it to its knees a couple of hours later. This site needs a code enema.

Maybe you need a new netbook?

(insert Ads for netbooks here)*

-------
* New slashcode since Dice aquistion, still a bit buggy

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[SomePoorSchmuck]

It's also the only way to keep your karma from going in the toilet if you post something that goes against the prevailing wisdom (and we NEED those kind of posters on topics where groupthink tends to set in).

So what? What has good karma ever gotten anyone?

I've been here for almost 15 years. I have excellent karma. Not sure how my use/enjoyment of the site is any different than if I had crap karma. I guess I do get to meta-mod. Big whoop.

I always read at -1 and load all comments, because I've found that I enjoy the downmodded comments as well. I just scroll past any comments/subthreads which seem irrelevant. I've tried browsing at higher level scores and the conversation gets really herky-jerky really quickly. The total democratization of AC posts and the wildly free-as-in-speech, uh, speech, that takes place here is, for me, one of its essential charms.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[somersault]

Aaaaaand.. do you remember back all the way to the start of his comment, ie the bit I was responding to?

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[shutdown -p now]

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

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[shutdown -p now]

It's also the only way to keep your karma from going in the toilet if you post something that goes against the prevailing wisdom

It's certainly the easiest way (though it also radically narrows your audience, since you start at a low moderation score to begin with, will accrue negative mod points, and then some people don't read ACs at all).

It's not the only way. One thing that sets Slashdot apart is that you can post something that goes against groupthink here and still have it modded up. You'll have to work harder on that, as in making a convincing sounding argument, citing your references etc. But it's doable, and there are plenty of upmodded "contrarian" posts to show for it.

Re:Let's Just Hope They Leave Well Enough Alone

[funwithBSD]

That explains the smell.

Focus on building ThinkGeek?

[MetalliQaZ]

As in the retail sales? That doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling for Slashdot...

Re:Focus on building ThinkGeek?

[larry bagina]

Va Research aka VA Linux aka VA Software aka SourceForge Inc aka GeekNet is a clusterfuck of failure. Like the Banjamin Button of companies, going from $320/share to under $1 in 2011. (They would have been delisted but the rules were temporarily suspended after 9/11). And now they're a web store that could be run by the "CEO" in his spare time.

Does anybody buy their shit? I know some ./ people did to support slashdot but other than their ads here, I wouldn't know of them.

$20,000,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:$20,000,000?

[jigamo]

In this article, it mentions that the revenue for Slashdot, SourceForge, and Freecode (the 3 acquisitions) was $20 million last year. I'm not totally sure what it means to sell them for 1 year's revenue, but the article interpreted that fact as as a suggestion of trouble within the 3 sites.

Re:$20,000,000?

[Tharsman]

I think slashdot is not even worth the cost of the MP3 player battery for them. They likely aquired the whole bag in order to get their hands in SourceForge.

Re:$20,000,000?

[pavon]

According to an article on TechCrunch, these three sites have a yearly profit (EBITDA) of $5 million. From what I've read the purchase price (3*profits + some) is typical of acquisitions of mature companies. It is neither insane dot-com buyout (expecting unrealistic growth), or clearance corner liquidation of assets (expecting to bleed it till it dies).

Oblig

[broginator]

I for one welcome our new Dice overlords.

I, for one, welcome our new Dice overlords.

[Anonymous Coward]

Had to be said.

Sold for 1X revenue?

[ip_freely_2000]

Did someone have a casino loss to pay off?

Re:Sold for 1X revenue?

[sartwell]

I think someone realized that all Slashdot readers use adblockPlus!

Re:Sold for 1X revenue?

[vlm]

Terror of what happens to future earnings when igoogle goes away along with my /. RSS feed.

Re:Sold for 1X revenue?

[jeffasselin]

They may have been doing 20mil in revenue, but they don't mention what the profits were (or probably losses).

Please keep the URLs working

[Bill Dimm]

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

Re:Please keep the URLs working

[Soulskill]

I don't think this will be an issue, but I'll make sure everybody's aware of it.

Better Overlords?

[TheNinjaroach]

I hope Dice proves to be better corporate overlords than the ones that sent CmdrTaco packing.

Taco Come Back

[RapidEye]

Save us CmdrTaco, you're our only hope!

I hope they don't just let it languish

[TheSpoom]

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.

Re:I hope they don't just let it languish

[Nemyst]

Considering what "innovation" did to Lifehacker and other Gawker sites, I think the last thing you want is innovation.

Re:I hope they don't just let it languish

[TheSpoom]

Both extremes are bad. If they just leave it completely on its own and ride its ad revenue into irrelevance, that's just as bad as bulldozing it and rebuilding, Digg-style.

As Futurama's "God" once said, you have to use a light touch. Here's hoping Dice knows what they're getting into.

Re:I hope they don't just let it languish

[xaxa]

Why do you need a kickstarter?

The code is here. Get a domain and some hosting, post some interesting stories. If you edit the summaries, and avoid flamebait articles, people might look!

Leave it alone

[Psykechan]

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.

Slashdotted, text/Webpro.

[MRe_nl]

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."

Re:Slashdotted, text/Webpro.

[AwesomeMcgee]

It's an entrenched brand name, the website isn't the point, they can slap the brand name on all kinds of things and many people associate the name alone with tech smart people without really ever coming here. They'll start advertising 'slashdot quality' level resumes to their clients. Then they can sell the brand name for $3million to some hardware company who can start slapping it on mice, keyboards, and web cams. The brand name can be productized, the users who are leary of the slightest bit of overlordness however have no value-add. They'll try to sell access to our personal info and monitoring services to businesses, but most of us will have seen the writing on the wall by then and left.

Re:Slashdotted, text/Webpro.

[ColdWetDog]

Funny thing about noise. You gain bring up the gain, but it's still noise.

New Overlords

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Care to Elaborate?

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[crazyjj]

while you're busily shredding documents or while you're issuing cyanide capsules

I think you just described a typical day at Yahoo.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[Soulskill]

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.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[SuperKendall]

This is my reaction from what I've heard today from the higher-ups. Duress isn't a factor

The problem is they would say that no matter what. Higher ups always use major change as an opportunity to say there are no troubles anywhere. It could be true, but it could just as easily not be true.

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?

No. If you think about it what SlashDot, SourceForge and ThinkGeek had in common was a core group of users that was very similar. That meant leadership when thinking what to do with all of the properties had only one audience to keep in mind.

Slashdot users are just a tiny subset of people Dice serves. The general concern would be that there might be an attempt to bring Slashdot to a more general audience since that is what the people that run Dice understand - the broad market, not just the technical niche.

I hope you are right and they really are thinking about carrying on as before. I expect some change is inevitable, but again I'm hoping it's not some kind of push to bring in more general users.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[jenningsthecat]

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.... 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.

Translation: "The walls have ears, and I haven't yet figured out my bailout strategy."

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[eldavojohn]

The Dice folks simply said, "Let them talk."

That's a great promising attitude and good to hear as long as they weren't twirling a diamond studded ivory cane while sipping Hennessy in their top hat and monocle as they spat it out ;-)

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.

Okay, I would say one thing to him: "There are these nebulous things that set Slashdot apart from the other news sites like Reddit, Digg, etc. These things cannot really be quantified well. Something's can like the comment and moderation system. Somethings cannot like the nice blend of stories and story types on the frontpage (I think the FAQ called it a "breakfast burrito"?). So your message to him should be that the Slashdot staff knows these things and Dice does not. But most importantly the second those things go away, then you are no different from Reddit or CNN's Tech Site or whomever. And it's going to be all the much easier for me to just roll on over to the biggest site that has the same implementation of how I get my news. I'll take my book reviews, comments and ball and play elsewhere. Your autonomy protects that. I love that you stood up to Microsoft and tried to stand up to Scientology. I don't think someone with money at risk looking over your shoulder would have allowed that.

As far as being consumed by a bigger fish, keep in mind that Geeknet (aka SourceForge aka VA, etc) was a bigger fish itself.

Totally agree. Honestly, it felt like you guys might have lost some of your autonomy in that move. I don't criticize it, I don't know the whole story but I wouldn't believe you if you said it had no effect at any point on Slashdot-related decisions. Personally, I prefer a lot of little fish for me to pick from even if it means competing standards and difficulty communicating across sites. I don't like one massive behemoth that dictates what the rules are to everyone who wants to play. So it's a natural worriment to me when yet another bigger fish gobbles you up. Hopefully it isn't negative but I can't help but default to it being negative.

I'm thrilled at the possibility of getting a bigger investment into Slashdot, both from an engineering perspective and an editorial perspective.

I will come back to a site that is under such heavy load that I cannot reach it. I will not come back to a site that is yet another news aggregator no matter how quick their servers are.

I'm glad that they're concerned about the user experience. I'm glad that you're cautiously optimistic (although I also feel like you haven't a choice). My concise fears are about the questions that come down that say "How can we direct more eyeballs at our job listings or perhaps inject job listings into Slashdot without risking too much of the overall Slashdot user experience?" Will you play that game?

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[grub]

Maybe I was just mocking Bob...
I see he was on the other day.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[Soulskill]

I'll make sure he sees your comment.

I understand your worries about our autonomy. As an editor, it's a worry I've had for years, any time a part of the organization has changed. It's part of the job description. Cautiously optimistic is a good way to put it. Here's another reason why I feel that way: they clearly know what Slashdot is like; if they wanted to change how we do things, it would be much easier for them to just fire us all and bring in new people who don't already have very strong opinions about what Slashdot should be.

To be frank, I have no idea if or how Slashdot and Dice will be integrated. I don't have any information about it, and I don't know that anybody does. Perhaps the 'Jobs' link at the top of the page under Channels will change. I assume there will be a link in the footer. Sorry, I wish I had more information to give you. All I can promise is that we editors will continue to fight for user experience.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[Zero__Kelvin]

" I'm sitting in a conference room right now next to a gentleman from Dice ..."

Does yuor frend from Dice understand stenography? Because often I find innocent responses mght have hidden meaning.

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[shutdown -p now]

The whole point of Slashdot is that it serves as a news aggregator / discussion forum for a very narrow category of people. From money making perspective, it lets you do fairly targeted data mining and advertising. If they bring it to a more general audience, then what, exactly, would be its value to anyone?

Re:Care to Elaborate?

[SuperKendall]

You and I know that. Does Dice?

Top ten effects of Slashdot being bought by Dice

[SuperKendall]

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!

Re:And please, Mr. Geeknet

[Soulskill]

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.

Dice is run by a bunch of

[naroom]

This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.

Sorry, But Its Still Dead, Jim.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sorry, But Its Still Dead, Jim.

[fm6]

So you're saying that Slashdot died in 1999, when Rob sold it to Andover? Which is a couple years before I even started using it.

The dumb thing is that site revenues when it was still Rob's personal site were about $20K. Not even enough to make it a full time job for him. That sale transformed his hobby into a serious business.

I'm reminded of a Marine Corps joke. The first recruitment drive occurred at Tun Tavern on November 10, 1775, The story goes that the first marine to sign up looked at the next guy to come into the tavern, sighed, and said "Oh, it's not like the old Corps!"

That said, I"m not optimistic about this sale. DICE runs the most appalling useless, spammy recruitment site in the business. And that's saying a lot. I assume they're good at making money, but it's not clear to me how. It certainly has nothing to do with maintaining a useful web site.

No no no no.

[MRe_nl]

God doesn't play with Dice.

Multiples

[sjbe]

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.

Typical price

[sjbe]

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.

Did they get a discount?

[damn_registrars]

I would presume that they would have had to pay more to get the geeknet holdings without slashdot.

Time will tell

[davidwr]

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.

don't count on that kind of epic change

[damn_registrars]

To Dice: if it ain't broken, don't "fix it".

That has never been the motto here. Why would it take hold now?

Re:don't count on that kind of epic change

[nitehawk214]

To Dice: if it ain't broken, don't "fix it".

That has never been the motto here. Why would it take hold now?

If it ain't broken, fix it until it is.

I for one

[mandark1967]

welcome our tumbly, six-sided overlords.

More Quotes from Dice, via TechCrunch

[jenningsthecat]

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.

Re:More Quotes from Dice, via TechCrunch

[EmagGeek]

"Dice has been talking about building content and user engagement to be top of mind and more integral to professionals doing work..."

Wow, I for one welcome our new marketing-bullshit overlords.

Thanks for all the fish...

[sinij]

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.

Re:Who cares

[TopSpin]

This site jumped the shark when it was renamed Slashdot from Dips and Chips :P

Chips & Dips supposedly... I wouldn't know as I have no memory of it.

A lot of low UIDs replying to this story. Grow or die, as they say. Problem is I'm not sure Slashdot scales. I know it is really easy to upset the user base. It won't take many blunders to kill off what is still here.

It's up to you Dice. You're definitely the bull in the proverbial China Shop now. Someone with more vision than I might find a way to build on the Slashdot brand without wrecking it, but that will take talent beyond anything we've seen so far.

A tribute to the greatness that was Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

(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