AWS will soon be sponsoring Super User

Question

We're excited to announce that AWS will be sponsoring Super User beginning September 27, 2021 through December 31, 2022. We wanted to give you a heads up and walk you through what it will look like.

How and where will the sponsorship be displayed?

The sponsorship will be shown in the top right header of the site in a manner that's similar to the mockup below:

What else changes?

Nothing! Quoting from the original MSE announcement on sponsorships:

First — sponsors do not own these Q&A sites. Sponsors work alongside our communities who ultimately build these sites. Communities ask the questions; communities create the tags; communities conduct elections as they do now, and we are not renaming our current sites like a garish sport stadium to the highest bidder. Any ads a sponsor submits still have go through our crazy-strict ad editorial process… as it has always been. Companies do not have access to personal data, and all Q&A content remains irrevocably licensed under Creative Commons for sharing and attribution.

Sponsorships are a tool that our clients can use to let folks who would be interested in their products know about them.

What if I think I've found a design glitch/bug?

If something looks off, please report it as a bug so we can investigate and squash it.

That's it. If you have any other questions or concerns, please leave them as answers below.

Also, thank you. These types of partnerships help us bring more resources to our communities and they wouldn't be possible without the work you've put into making Super User successful.

Answer 1

Couple of points here - as a long time user of the site and a moderator.

One of the 'issues' us smaller sites have is that sometimes there's a 'question' of the value we bring to the broader network. And yes, sometimes this is in terms of money, rather than diversity of topics or other touchy-feely things.The fact that we're picked for sponsorship does reflect that AWS feels that even though they're not topical for us, that its a good way to reach out to the tech community.

That said - AWS remains off topic for us :), and its a slightly unusual fit 'organically' but I guess someone felt we could make it work.

As for the benefits, at the most basic level - SE gets paid. SE sees that line in the balance sheet that says 'we got $$$ via the Super User Sponsorship'. Even the most cynical exec would see value in that. Some of this money will be going back into the community, either as development expenses or as hires for folks working in and for the community. If nothing else - even with our new corporate overlords, revenue sources such as this directly tied to sites starves off the risk or restructuring, and there's a direct financial hit to sites being unhappy.

As for resources - the network doesn't run for free. One of the major pain points we've had is the company not meeting its financial goals on specific products, and figuring that they can cut back, which resulted in many teams being short handed. Its all about the Benjamins, and some of the money that is obtained for/via sponsorships goes back to development (including pub-plat hires), Community (and we're finally rightsizing our CM teams - which means more hires... finally!). Its a bit harsh, but we've all seen what happens when management disregards public platform - figuring other things would be more profitable to focus on, and its ugly. I'd rather have opportunities for folks to show we can pull our own weight and that investment in the network isn't just 'nice' - its essential for the financial well-being of the company

Its a small, relatively unobtrusive ad - see the one on infosec's top bar:

In addition to that AWS 'gets' half the ad inventory on the site - which means that there's an easier time filling that out, which once again, means our site kinda helps bring revenue in.

they won't be getting involved with the site at all, so contributing manpower to help with moderation, cleanup or upvoting underrated questions/answers seems unlikely.

Uh, we don't really need a bunch of random people 'helping' with that. We need investment in pubplat and community and the network/company finding a sustainable way to ensure the smaller sites get the attention and support we need.