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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[funwithBSD]

That explains the smell.

$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".

Oblig

[broginator]

I for one welcome our new Dice overlords.

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!

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

Better Overlords?

[TheNinjaroach]

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

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?

[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.

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.

No no no no.

[MRe_nl]

God doesn't play with Dice.

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.

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.