Facebook Replaces Developer Forums with Stack Overflow

Facebook is doing something we don't see often from the company, or ever, it's outsourcing one of its components. The social network will replace its own developer forums with a dedicated section on StackOverflow.com. Facebook says that the move will ensure that developers have the best place where to get help.

Granted, the move will only affect developers, but it's still something that Facebook rarely does. Than again, Facebook would probably focus on its product rather than maintaining its developer forums.

"Today we are excited to launch facebook.stackoverflow.com, a partnership with programming Q&A site Stack Overflow to support Facebook Platform developers," Facebook's Will Liu writes.

"Many Facebook engineers actively participate on Stack Overflow, along with some of the most knowledgeable Facebook developers, making it one of the best places for you to get help with your technical questions," he said.

Stack Overflow has become pretty much the best place for any coding-related question and has quite a large user base.

It's also better suited for the type of volume the Facebook developer forums sees. Another plus is that it's continually updated and upgraded, something that Facebook now no longer has to do on its own.

"This partnership replaces our existing forums, which, while worked effectively at the beginning of Platform, have begun to show their age," Facebook said.

"We spent many months looking at the right long-term solution and decided that a partnership with one of the best technical Q&A sites on the Web was the best approach for our community," it added.

The existing forums will be frozen and no one will be able to post starting September 1st.

To make the switch easier, developers can log into Stack Overflow with their Facebook accounts. What's more, they can link their existing accounts with their Facebook ones, if they already have one.