Why would a site for job listings in the tech industry purchase $20 million in news aggregator sites? This is a question many are asking after Dice acquired Slashdot and two other news aggregator sites from Geeknet, Inc. in September.
What is Slashdot?
- Site displays a continually- running feed of news and questions submitted by users on a variety of technology topics
- An average of 3.7 million unique visitors frequent the site each month
- An average 5,300 comments are logged each day on the site
The other two?
- SourceForge and Freecode
- Both are indexes for software: SourceForge for opensource, and Freecode for Linux
Reasons for the purchase?
Mike Durney, Dice’s CEO, shared that the company has wanted to increase the site’s regular engagement opportunities. “We want people to come to us for help for doing their jobs [on a daily basis], not just when they’re looking to make a career change,” he explains. “The people [at Geeknet] have done a tremendous job at building up user engagement and user action over time.” Durney also noted that Dice wanted the talent associated with the acquired sites. “Why build our own thing and compete for mindshare?” he says.
According to a statement issued late September, the three sites generated $20 million in revenues in 2011. Their collective readership is also worth mentioning. Most of Slashforge’s readership (nearly 40 million unique visitors per month) come from Brazil, Germany, France, the UK and some other areas outside the US. Durney commented, “Strategically we have been trying to move into tech online recruiting outside of North America for a long time. This is a way we can get access to a more international userbase.”
What will it look like?
Users can rest assured that the three sites will continue to operate independently and won’t see much of a change. Though, over time, Dice plans to incorporate qualities from the purchased sites, specifically user-engagement features such as discussion threads.
