2024 was an exciting year at Stack Overflow. From the launch of new products and features that came directly from integrations with global partnerships to outlining our vision for Knowledge-as-a-service and the changing state of internet models. Hard to believe, but in many ways we have so much more to share in 2025.
As I closed out my last quarterly update, I mentioned, “At Stack Overflow, we’re committed to our community, whether that be our public platform users, our customers, partners, and Stackers, but we also deeply believe in building a future where our larger knowledge communities can thrive in the era of AI. An essential part of that mission is preserving the trust that our community has placed in us for 16 years, and that means continuing to invest back into our knowledge ecosystem.”
“Investing” in Community is something we discussed a number of times over the past several years as we began our efforts to evaluate how Stack Overflow will evolve in the GenAI era. For some of you, I’m sure the question was raised: “Well, how exactly are you investing in the community?” I’m glad you asked.
Within the digital walls of Stack Overflow, we frequently say “Keep Community at Our Center.” And we mean that. This manifests itself in a number of ways, and one of those is our commitment to the high-quality, accurate library of knowledge built and maintained by the Stack Exchange Communities over the past sixteen years. For Stack Overflow and the larger Stack Exchange network to continue to grow and thrive, we must invest in ways to make it easier for new users to be able to contribute high-quality content. We also need to invite contributors—new ones and long-time, experienced ones—to contribute in new forms beyond just Q&A.
Over the course of the next year, we’ll be focused on ensuring our sites remain a go-to destination for our users, including by modernizing the existing assets we have in place and also by introducing new capabilities and features that promote contribution from all types of users. There is already a lot of experimentation at work on our team, and although we’ve tried to show previews where we can, we want to peel back the curtain and show you more.
The efforts we make and the new features or products we unveil mean nothing if we aren’t involving community members—the true experts on how the product is used and the challenges it has. We need more community voices at the table, so we’re actively exploring ways to bring in more community perspectives and participation. In order to be an inclusive destination for everyone who wants to participate and consume content, we need a wide range of participants in our research and testing efforts. One of the ways to invite these new perspectives will be our first public AMA.
VP of Community Philippe Beaudette, Chief Product & Technology Officer Jody Bailey, and I will share our vision for new content types and how they will include the quality controls that have made Stack Overflow the trusted resource it is. We’ll also explore other opportunities for community members to edit, rate, and build new features collaboratively.
I hope you’ll join us live on Wednesday, February 26th at 3 pm ET via our YouTube channel (here) to hear our vision. We’ll answer as many questions as we can during the time we have together.