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As described in the blog post We're Changing Our Name (Back) to Stack Overflow, the new name of the Stack Exchange Inc. company is "Stack Overflow".

To avoid all confusion: how do the SE people want to be named when talking about the company? If we say "Stack Overflow", is that the company or the site? If we say "the SO team", do we mean the SO moderators? Or do we mean the SO company?

Please clarify how to go around the confusion.

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  • Proposal: SO Inc.?
    – cpast
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 6:49
  • 5
    That is a possibility, but I am actually looking for an answer from SE itself. Oh no, SO itself...Argh!
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 6:51
  • 9
    Call 'em the "SO confusing" team.
    – Nathan Tuggy
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 6:59
  • 10
    The company formerly known as Stack Exchange?
    – yannis
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 7:06
  • 5
    @Yannis I don't hope they revert to SE again, so it becomes: The company formerly known as Stack Overflow, formerly known as Stack Exchange.
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 7:08
  • @PatrickHofman At that point they'll just add the SO logo into unicode somewhere and make that the official company name.
    – Troy Jennings
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 7:10
  • Showing my age: You can call me SO, you can call me SE, you can call me Ray, you can call me Ray Jay, you can call me RJ, ...
    – Barmar
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 19:52

2 Answers 2

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You don't have to do anything differently. If you want to say ... but SE already responded saying it was too costly to implement -- go ahead :). You can call us SO, you can call us SE, 'those crazy people that honestly think they run this place' or whatever works for you. There are far worse things we could be called than any of the possibilities I see here :) People have been using a mix of SO / SE for a while now.

Stack Exchange will always be a big part of our identity.

This is always going to be Meta SE (as far as I know), so if SE feels natural to you, then use SE. Or SO if you want to do something differently.

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  • I know there is a distinction between the Q/A network and the company, still it all is confusing at best. So using "SE team" to point to the people behind the "SE Q/A network" is still okay?
    – Patrick Hofman
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 7:15
  • What will happen if Experts Exchange rename themselves to Experts Overflow?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 8:47
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    -1 on not having the disambiguation plan before the announcement. Very, very confusing.
    – Deer Hunter
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 9:12
  • @PatrickHofman Yes, that's perfectly fine. In fact, we might do well to give folks some insight into the structure that we've arrived at - "SE Team" couldn't be more accurate, as we now also have "SO Team" "International Team" "Careers Team" "Marketing Team", etc.
    – user50049
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 11:10
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    @TimPost Is there any way for us to know who's on SE Team and who's on SO Team? The company /about/team page does not make this distinction.
    – user259867
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 11:18
  • @NormalHuman I'll probably be writing a 'who are the people in the community growth neighborhood' post in the very near future. To be clear, we all work on every site when it needs whatever talent we have - but a few of us primarily focus on SO, more than a few primarily focus on the SE network, some focus more on things that encompass everything, then there's the international team, operations team within community growth, and more. I'm not going to post a full organizational chart of the team, but I think if people saw how we're positioned, they'd be 80% less worried about this change.
    – user50049
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 16:05
  • If writing a post for this purpose is too time-consuming, consider editing the existing list to reflect some of the team structure. In the present form, this flat list adds little to no value to the about/team page
    – user259867
    Commented Sep 29, 2015 at 2:31
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I'm going to use

  • Stack Overflow, Inc or SOI to refer to the company
  • Stack Overflow or SO to refer to the site
  • Stack Exchange or SE to refer to the collection of sites as a whole
  • SO Valued Associate(s) to refer to employee(s) of SOI

I doubt it will actually cause much confusion, but there will be those who will spend inordinate amounts of time re-editing the already edited questions to change "Stack Exchange" back to "Stack Overflow" and if they're going to the effort, I hope they include the "Inc."

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  • 2
    I think this is right. You can just say "Stack Overflow" most of the time, because in context it'll be clear what you mean. In cases where it's unclear, just say "Stack Overflow Inc" to clarify that you mean the company, same way we occasionally said "Stack Exchange Inc" to distinguish it from the network.
    – David Fullerton
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 13:40
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    Wait, we used plenty of ink when we signed all of these things. Why do we still need inc?
    – user50049
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 16:08
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    @TimPost Well if you'd've been using pencil all these years, changing the name wouldn't've been such a big deal.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Sep 16, 2015 at 17:49
  • @DavidFullerton Is the official legal name still Stack Exchange Inc?
    – Stijn
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 9:29
  • @Stijn it's murky at the moment because they're still using stack exchange Inc on their main homepage footer. stackexchange.com I'm pretty sure the legal name of he company changed to stack overflow Inc, but who knows.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 12:34
  • @AdamDavis that's exactly why I'm asking :) the /legal page also uses SE Inc
    – Stijn
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 12:47
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    @Stijn I suspect they don't really care enough to do a site wide search for the old name and replace it everywhere. The blog post seems pretty clear. However, they haven't registered Stack Overflow, Inc as a delaware or new york corporation. They have Stack Exchange, Inc, and Stack Overflow, LLC as delaware corporations, and they have a listing on the new york corporate entity list as a delaware corporation with DBAs of Stack Exchange, Inc, and Stack Overflow Internet Services, Inc. So I share your confusion, there doesn't seem to be any single good citable reference for the company name.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 14:08
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    @Stijn Yes, it is still that. This was raised on Meta before, and answered by employees in the sense that Stack Overflow is what they prefer to be called, while the legal name stays what it is. Rebranding, not renaming. Source
    – user315433
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 14:33

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