AI Forces Stack Exchange to Try a Rebranding Play
June 19, 2025
Stack Exchange is a popular question and answer Web site. Devclass reports it will sone be rebranding: “Stack Overflow Seeks Rebrand As Traffic Continues To Plummet – Which Is Bad News For Developers.”
According to Stack Overflow’s data explorer, the amount of questions and answers posted in April 2025 compared to April 2024 is down 64% and it’s down 90% from 2020. The company will need to rebrand because AI is changing how users learn, build, and resolve problems. Some users don’t think a rebrand is necessary, but the Stack Exchange thinks differently:
“Nevertheless, community SVP Philippe Beaudette and marketing SVP Eric Martin stated that the company’s “brand identity” is causing “daily confusion, inconsistency, and inefficiency both inside and outside the business.”
Among other things, Beaudette and Martin feel that Stack Overflow, dedicated to developer Q&A, is too prominent and that “most decisions are developer-focused, often alienating the wider network.”
CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar wants his company’s focus to change from only a question and answer platform to include community and career pillars. The company needs to do a lot to maintain its relevancy but Stack Overflow is still important to AI:
“The company’s search for a new direction though confirms that the fast-disappearing developer engagement with Stack Overflow poses an existential challenge to the organization. Those who have found the site unfriendly or too ready to close carefully-worded questions as duplicate or off-topic may not be sad; but it is also true that the service has delivered high value to developers over many years. Although AI may seem to provide a better replacement, some proportion of those AI answers will be based on the human-curated information posted by the community to Stack Overflow. The decline in traffic is not good news for developers, nor for the AI which is replacing it.”
Stack Overflow is an important information fount, but the human side of it is its most important resource. Why not let gentle OpenAI suggest some options?
Whitney Grace, June 19, 2025
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