Billions seems like a lot, but I wouldn't call BS on it out of hand.
[1] The year before Haml was introduced.
However, when I need to go to work, and my boss decides "So that position we hired you for, now its going to be ruby as well, but later on ObjC and Java.", SO comes to the rescue.
The core concepts of programming languages were cemented in my years deciphering terrible notes and learning to code in college, however the little nuances of each language inherently evade me. This is where SO has shined the most. Most of the time, solutions with multiple approaches suggested show more about the language itself than the problem asked.
Source: https://www.quantcast.com/stackexchange.com?country=US https://www.quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com?country=US
From the start I've always thought that the biggest danger to SO/SE wasn't failure, you guys are smart enough to see and recover from outright failure. Instead it's reaching a level of success far below what you're capable of.
It seems to me that SO/SE spent a lot of work innovating in the early days but once they found their comfort zone they've stopped innovating. They are good sites for their intended purpose but how much of the original vision has been abandoned? I remember back when you and Jeff were talking about taking over the way all online discussion happened. Nothing like that is even remotely possible with the way StackExchange is today.
To be bluntly honest I think you guys are just lucky that most of the ambitious and competent folks in the industry don't view discussion as "sexy" so you don't have as much ompetition as you would otherwise (quora is practically a joke). But realistically it's just a matter of time until SE will be out innovated.
The whole point of SO from the beginning was to build a Q&A site for programmers that didn't suffer from the shortcomings of using apps such as phpBB etc, where threads get hijacked and pages upon pages of extraneous discussion and arguments take place making it difficult to find and answer to a specific problem.
However, I do hope that we get an even better discussion platform than the ones we have now. I really look forward to even cooler products in the future.
Aren't they now -- or at least Jeff Atwood -- working on Discourse?
See http://discuss.emberjs.com/ and http://bbs.boingboing.net/ for real world implementations. It's very, very cool to see forums being dragged out of the 1990s.
Also thanks for teaching me a new idiom :)
Try this thought experiment: if a stack exchange competitor showed up tomorrow, what sorts of features would it have to have to make you start waking up in a cold sweat every day?
One of the things I consider a main detriment of our current product is that for the vast majority of users it's built to be transactional. Search, land on SO, read, go back to work.
On our currently in development mobile apps we're trying out something different, for the first time at scale we're pushing content to users rather than having them search for it as the number one utility of the product. The apps have a "Feed" which is machine learned interesting for you questions.
I love it since I search SO at work but when I get home or am walking around town I can open my app and instantly lose 30 mins (at least) to reading and interacting with very interesting content. I can't wait to see if others like it.
I think SO and Server Fault are the size they are because they have an intrinsic advantage over our other sites. People in the target audience work and live in the same tech ecosystem as a website, with something like physics that's an initial burden.
SE itself also has a high barrier to entry. Every one of our sites has it's own rules and definition of what type of content is acceptable. This is for a very good reason, seeking out absolute answers to questions. Most other websites on the internet live to foster discussion, but we're not a forum.
Making stack exchange a common name (in more than our sizable niche) is one of our company goals, but I don't really know what we can do to get past the initial issue I mentioned and reducing the second would hurt our product.
It's quite an interesting idea to be more proactive about bringing thought leaders to out lesser known sites, I don't know if we could do it just directly since most thought leaders are very busy people who already have a dozen places people ask them questions but it's something to think about. We already consider expertise of contributors in Area 51, our incubator for new website ideas.
Perhaps while we may not be able to get the top 1% of thought leaders onto our websites without giving them a really hard question to answer (my mom loves difficult questions, god knows how many times she used to run into my room and say she solved a question I asked her in passing days prior) but it might be possible to bring in up-and-coming thought leaders. A lot of my friends from the health and fitness industry (were I used to live) might want to use our Physical Fitness Stack Exchange site to foster their own personal brand.
To your initial issue, yes reaching out to the upcoming thought leaders could be great. I know of a few friends in fitness industry who send me thoughts via email. But don't discount the ability for you to get the top 1% thought leaders. Have you tried it? You would be surprised by how many of them actually want to show their leadership and 'help' others.
BTW Thanks for reading my answer. I usually am a silent browser of HN and felt compelled to answer since I have been thinking about this a lot. Would be happy to jump on skype to chat further.
So there's less need to be constantly feeling out new undocumented territory in other professions.