Stack Overflow Hits 3m Unique Visitors in 4 Months; Plans IT Spin-Off Site
Stack Overflow, the software developers' Q&A site created by rock star programmers Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, saw 3 million unique visitors last month - just the 4th month the site has been live, according to Spolsky in the latest episode of the Stack Overflow podcast. Now the team plans to create a spin-off site serving what they believe is an even bigger audience, IT professionals.
Traffic wise, the well constructed site appears to be an early and unqualified success. It's also a lot of fun to read. The people behind the long established but widely reviled paid Q&A site Experts Exchange must be struggling to control bodily functions.
Spolsky says, not entirely in jest, that the traffic numbers are likely inflated by a disproportionate number of programmers with their browsers set to reject cookies - but the numbers are awesome for such a young website none the less.
What's Next?
The IT spin-off site is as yet unnamed and conversations are still ongoing about what level of technical sophistication the target audience will have. The core product of Stack Overflow is incredibly well thought out and a pleasure to use, as we detailed in our original review of the site when it launched. The prospect of this same approach applied to a non-programming technical help site is appealing.
Usability, clear market need, search engine friendly content and famous founders all combined to bring the site traffic that anyone would be envious of right out of the gate. Earlier this month the tiny new company made its first hire and we can't help but think with this kind of traffic there's money on the table that could be used to expand further at any time.
Stack Overflow may or may not grow into a major technical publishing endeavor, but its founders already have reason to be very proud of its success so far. We wish them continued success and we look forward to seeing what they do next.
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3m uniques? What am I missing here? I'll have to check it out again.
Posted by: Dave Hodson
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January 16, 2009 10:24 AM
Compete.com shows 320,000 uniques for the last month (from US only): http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/?metric=uv
If you double or triple it you could have the visitors from around the world...but still it's not 3 million.
Yes, it's not accurate but it gives you an idea. And yes, maybe we are missing something :)...
Misuse of the word "rockstar" once again. Unless they have proof positive that they actually shared a stage somewhere with instrument in hand, they are not a rockstar. re: http://twitter.com/RexDixon/statuses/1124003332
Yes, I'm on the rampage today - it's 13 degrees and my furnace is out! :) re: http://rexduffdixon.com/2009/01/16/om-man-you-let-me-down/
Seriously, great post as usual Marshall, and nice to read about online success early for a startup!
Rex
I really love StackOverflow, it has lots and lots of qualified people that answer just about any question and the rewarding system is incredibly motivating :-)
There is obviously a misinterpretation of the data presented at Joel's blog post about stack overflows traffic.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/28.html
The blog post clearly shows 3 million visits but not 3 million unique visitors. It is more likely that 300,000 users visited the site about 3 million times.
Akshat, thanks - you are right. We've revised that post.
Actually, going to just put that little retraction here in comments since this story was syndicated to the NYT and they don't need the following on their site:
Update: An astute reader pointed us in comments to a post on Spolsky's blog 2 weeks earlier that show different traffic stats, these indicating that there were 3 million visits in December, not 3 million unique visitors as we understood from the Stack Overflow podcast. We regret looking stupid and hope you'll see this update before dropping the originally reported statistic at a party.
ExpertsExchange is a pain in the arse. Google should drop them from the top search position.
What's the point of sending me to a website where:
1) the same question was asked
2) I have to pay money to find out if the question was answered
3) Even if it was answered, most likely the answer is total crap.
I had a paid sub with them for a month just to see what's happening. It's full of wankers. Experts are posting answers just for sake of posting, hoping it will score a hit. Very little to no value.
Now see the difference.
This StackOverflow is not gonna be any better content quality, but it's free.
Who's gonna win?
Hey Guys!
We're not secretive about our data. We collect data using Google Analytics. Here's what we're currently showing for the last month:
* 3,177,242 Visits
* 8,989,966 Pageviews
* 1,871,027 Absolute Unique Visitors
The month in question includes Christmas and New Years during which we saw very low numbers, at least 20% lower than average.
I don't know where Compete data comes from. If they're even looking at Alexa, they're losing a ton of visitors, because as far as I know, Alexa is IE-only. Software developers overwhelmingly use Firefox (52% of our visitors), Chrome (7% of our visitors), or even Opera (3%) -- only 32% of our visitors are use Internet Explorer.
Joel Spolsky
Stack Overflow
Posted by: spolsky.myopenid.com
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January 17, 2009 3:24 PM
Yup... Stack Overflow is a great site to read. I go there almost everyday to find answers for my coding questions.
ExpertsExchange is one of the worst websites ever. A good use to that domain would be ExpertSexChange.
Wow that is a lot! I have never spent too much time on the site but have found myself there a couple of times when searching for the solution to a technical problem.
I think I will revisit and see exactly what else is there.