It's an unusual marriage. Dice CFO Mike Durney says the company has been looking for opportunities to increase regular engagement with its own site. "We want people to come to us for help for doing their jobs [on a daily basis], not just when they're looking to make a career change," he explains. "The people [at Geeknet] have done a tremendous job at building up user engagement and user action over time."
The three sites will continue to operate independently. Visitors "won't see any or much of any change," Durney says. Dice.com, however, will gradually incorporate some of the other sites' user-engagement features. For example, Dice will seed content from Slashdot's discussion threads related to job searches visitors conduct on the site.
Why acquire the sites? Why not become an advertiser instead? Durney says it was partly because Dice wanted the talent, and partly because it seemed more logical than building a rival content offering. "Why build our own thing and compete for mindshare?" he says.