is the End of Forums Era

[Prince]

yes and I still run 3 of them:

[Wayne Luke]

Message boards are a form of social media.

[Prince]

Says the person with 3,000 users currently on his forum.

Forums can still be useful and they are used by a large number of companies and organizations. They are just one method of communication in a social media and mobile world.

I hate social media, been using message boards since the 90's, but unfortunately its not the same as it used to be.

[Wayne Luke]

forums are pretty much dead now and not used much anymore, not sure how anyone can deny that.

Says the person with 3,000 users currently on his forum.

Forums can still be useful and they are used by a large number of companies and organizations. They are just one method of communication in a social media and mobile world.

[Prince]

forums are pretty much dead now and not used much anymore, not sure how anyone can deny that.

[Gary E]

Forums will never die, forums will just evolve, but they will still be forums.

What happens when you run into a problem no matter what it is, you go to google to research the problem. Thats what most people do in most situations, especially about tech related problems. And what kind of search results do you get on google when you research your problem? Its mostly forums you see that have the answer to your problem. Thats why forums exist in the first place.

Like I said, forums will never die, they will just evolve with more and more features and looks.

I have seen many custom forums that don't even look like forums at first, but if you go deeper you see that its just a forum. Most top companies still use forums, such as Alienware, Dell, Origin, Microsoft/Xbox, etc.... Forums will always have a place on the internet. Not to mention, Forums are the best for creating entire communities. I met some of the best kind of people on forums, people that I still talk to today.

Forums are not going anywhere.

[braintrainnerd]

Forums will never die.

[BTMike]

I think social media's such a Facebook, twitter and others have made it more challenging for forum type community to survive.

I agree, If you don't adapt you can go on the wayside, I also believe it has a lot to do with what type of community you operate. Mine is technical and specialized to one industry.

As we are all learning these days the big social media sites are not the safest place to be, its pretty much the wild west, no rules and no morals. I operate my community as somewhat of a safe haven, we enforce the rules and kick the trolls.

We have lost a few over the last few years, but in that we probably lost more of the trouble makers, they are out there on Facebook being kings of their own little islands instead of trying to run all of my regular members off.

My community has been in operation since 1997, Have made two or three software changes and moved to and from different dedicated servers and am now on vBulletin cloud. Along the way I have always been changing its look and features periodically to keep up with the times and keep it fresh. One thing that pushed me towards the vBulletin Cloud option was maintaining a dedicated server was killing me, I just don't have the time to maintain a dedicated server and a community.

It was time for me to focus on the community instead of a dedicated server and community. I spend a lot more time interfacing with community members that I ever have. I think that is important to members. If they see admins involved and having fun they are more likely to keep coming back themselves.

It does take a lot of work and you have to have a passion about your community. If you do it will show. rhens makes a lot of great points.

I'm staying optimistic for now. Is it the end of an era? I don't think so, I believe its just changing and we need to figure out how to keep up with it.

[rhens]

adapt or die....

everyone has heard this expression, and it is 100% applicable to forums. the website i started with 12 years ago had over 100,000 registered users....and many times that in unregistered users. their content is pretty much the same today as it was then....... and its a ghost town complete with tumbleweeds today. todays user is different than users from 10 years ago....there are an infinite number of sources and outlets for every imaginable interest. todays user is largely a browser, as the phone has overtaken the pc as the preferred method of internet access. because of the exponential growth in situational websites, the user's attention span has diminished greatly....and detailed information regarding any subject isnt the holy grail as it once was. facebook has made most internet browsers idiots.

forum owners do have many advantages social media cannot provide, as noted above. you have to be passionate about the subject matter you're covering..... facebook group admins generally arent. a forum provides its users the freedom to express themselves in a manner outlined by the forum owner....essentially creating the community standards users seek. facebook groups are subject to facebook rules....no matter what. i belong to a facebook group in support of the los angeles lakers....a group that had over 70,000 members....and facebook deleted the group without warning or explanation....just because they wanted to.

today, many of your users will be unregistered readers. in order to keep them coming back, you have to continue updating the content on your site. your passion will show through, and eventually....your readers will see this and feel comfortable enough to open an account and add their opinions to the collective. even though the phone rules users today..... i've noticed h/p is still doing a good business selling desktops...so there are still millions of people out there using computers....but your presentation has to be current and relevant. if your goal is to have your forum look like a forum from 20 years ago.....you'll fail.

there are many voices in this forum who want to blame the downfall of civilization on vB5.... but the fact of the matter is that forum owners have to do more than just buy the software. as a forum owner, look at your forum and ask yourself...."if i was looking at this website for the first time...would i return to it and/or register an account?"

if your answer is no....you have some work to do

[gregory64]

Sometimes forums are useful when someone does not want to have their actual identity associated with the comments they make online. Social media does not necessarily allow for that type of separation of identity. I run a midlife dating forum and website - and most members would never post what they post on my site onto their FB or other social media account.

[CarpCharacin]

I don't think that forums are dying.

[Nintenex]

I disagree, Like what Wayne Luke said, Forums are a utility, when you go to google and search anything any question most likely a forum witht hat question's answer will pop up in the results, forums are forever, I dont think ive ever seen a social media post in google or yahoo search.

Any information that you put on your forums is something someone might see 3 years from now and join your site, forums are far from defeated.

[elindo]

BTW... a "forum" alone is a good tool for Q&A and discussions of a certain topic. There will always be a need of a "forum", but you still need the other tools to keep growing.

[elindo]

I am a new customer, and I like the "forum" format and presentation.


It is not about 'social media' vs. 'forums'.. it is about "SHARING"


You can keep calling it forums, but you need to integrate more abilities to share like if it was pages, blogs, articles, activity stream, etc...

You also need to give the USERS the ability to have control of what they see. One thing I don't like about "social media" is that THEY control what the users see, and it should be the USERS who should have control of what they see and how much they see.


You have to give the users control of their own activity stream on what they see from pages, groups, friends, etc... the users should have control of RSS and email notifications...


Furthermore, the users should also have the ability of adding their very own monetization link on the pages of their own creation.


"Forums" will be dead only if you get stuck inside a box of what you think a forum should be.

[jdj]

I believe that it is the End of Forum site Era since most of user moved to social Networks and mobile social Apps.

What is your point of view regarding this issue and what is the future of vBulletin and its strategic plan?

I'm not sure how much the detail is welcome here on this thread. In general terms though on 'forums dead and social media alive' it's not that simple. When you connect a forum to social media some of the content goes on social media, some of the content goes on the forum. If all your content ends up going on social media you don't really have a forum, it's just a copy. If you have the tools available to you to put more useful content onto your forum then more of the traffic will go to your forum if you manage to do the right things with it and attract people from social media. Not having the right tools holds you back and stops you being able to serve your target audience.