Stack Overflow just became a top-500 site.

It's almost hard to believe we went so long without a site like StackOverflow. Not surprising they've grown so fast considering how much better they are than everyone else.<p>Congrats &#38; thank you to Jeff &#38; Joel &#38; the rest of the SO team. You guys truly make the Internet a better place for all programmers!

I really love SO. The thing that really got me started using it was the article I read (on here) about a guy who got headhunted for a job interview at Google off the back of his stack overflow score.<p>I thought - holy geez, I'd better get working then!<p>I've not actually been to quantcast before but it seems an interesting site. I usually grab my rankings data from Compete and Alexa<p>Top 300 sites worldwide and US in Alexa <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com#" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com#</a> Top 11,000 in Compete (maybe it's a bit better if you have their PRO ranking) <a href="http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/" rel="nofollow">http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/</a><p>Actually... Quantcast looks like it might be fundamentally different from Alexa and Compete. I wonder how much it costs? Maybe I could use that to find my audience.<p>One thing I found interestedin on quantcast the location dropdown and see how the site ranks in other countries.<p>Out of interest, I pulled Canada and saw that we've got Stack ranked as 105 instead of 500 ... which must mean we're 5 times "techie-er" than the States. BOO YAH! Then I switched to pulling the other dropdowns and realized we're both getting our butts handed to us by the UK, Germany and India. Probably just means all their OTHER sites suck eggs. :)

I've never looked at quantcast stats before. How accurate are their estimates of age, income, kids? I ask because it says that 23% of Stack Overflow's visitors are female, and that doesn't seem very accurate. <i>NB: This is based solely on my recollection posters' avatars, which may be a bad measure, but it's the only one I've got</i>.

It would be interesting to find out how many users they're getting from their semi recently launched API (<a href="http://stackapps.com" rel="nofollow">http://stackapps.com</a>). I know my iPhone Stack Exchange client <a href="http://sixtoeightapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://sixtoeightapp.com</a> has over a thousand downloads, and won't be counted by Quantcast. Whilst it's more of a complementary access point, other apps on Stack Apps might suffice as the sole access point for passive users (i.e. those who just want answers, as the API is read only currently).

In under two years, no less! It shows what dedication, attention to the big details, and a clear _goal_ can get you.<p>"So long hyphen site."

Think about the demographics of people who seek out and install the Quantcast/Compete/Alexa toolbar. Now look at the demographics of their respective Top N lists.<p>Now imagine a knitting community site that gets twice the traffic of StackOverflow. Would it appear in the Quantcast/Compete/Alexa Top 500?

I guess that settles the debate about whether choice of language matters or not :)<p>Although I can't imagine scaling has been fun (or cheap).

Stackoverflow is an excellent medium for asking programming questions.<p>The thing I question is their VC-backed strategy to apply that to many other fields. Sure it's early days yet but even the original "trilogy" sites haven't come anywhere near SO's success.<p>I have this nasty feeling that SO won't be able to justify that investment and thus turn from a successful small business to a failed venture.<p>On the plus side only one USV portfolio company (I forget the name) has ever switched off the lights.

Is this directly due to them being featured on MSDN?

I wonder what the numbers are for all the new sites, and whether they're started gaining serious traction outside of the SO regulars.

Alexa has had them in the top 500 for a while:<p><a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/stackoverflow.com</a><p>That's very impressive, I think that stackoverflow will see a major boost from google groups shutting down too.