The watching 'vBulletin's market share nosedive' thread.

With how many migrate away from vb, it's probably safe to say that the total of vb installations does shrink.

The total existing licences sold can only keep increasing, but the small marketshare numbers of vb5 suggest the market expanded faster than vb installations since a few years, and particularly vb5 installs. The good news in this is that it also means that the used market for unused vb licences keeps increasing quicker than new vb sales/installations.

The question is if the total forum market (not VB) is growing or falling. I suspect falling.

I just realized I asked my question wrong. It should be total installations (growing or shrinking) based on the same numbers from which the percentages are derived.

Andrew B. said:

I just realized I asked my question wrong. It should be total installations (growing or shrinking) based on the same numbers from which the percentages are derived.

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The percentages are based on 100%. 100% could be 100 or 1,000,000 sites.

Either way you look at it, the number of vB installations is shrinking.

And if the total market is shrinking as BOP suggests, then vB has a smaller share of that smaller market than it did before.

Snog said:

The percentages are based on 100%. 100% could be 100 or 1,000,000 sites.
Either way you look at it, the number of vB installations is shrinking.

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Not really, because 100 sites is less than 1,000,000 sites, and so 48% of 100 is less than 48% of 1,000,000. Simply looking at the percent does not tell the whole story.

Now, my hunch is the total count of VB sites is shrinking. But percent alone does not prove this. That's why I asked. Also, considering that someone is generating these percents from actual counts, it would be interesting to see how much they are going up or down.

The total number of vb sites recently shrunk by 1 when I converted my first site.... https://theadminzone.com/threads/ok-i-did-it-my-first-xf-conversion.135412/

Andrew B. said:

Not really, because 100 sites is less than 1,000,000 sites, and so 48% of 100 is less than 48% of 1,000,000. Simply looking at the percent does not tell the whole story.

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Percentage absolutely does tell the whole story.

Examples:

Total Sites: 1,000,000
Percentage of vB 1 year ago: 68%
Total vB sites would be: 680,000

Percentage of sites today: 48%
Total vB sites would be: 480,000

===========================

Total Sites: 1,000
Percentage of vB 1 year ago: 68%
Total vB sites would be: 680

Percentage of sites today: 48%
Total vB sites would be: 480

Assign whatever number you want to be 100% and the number of sites will drop when the percentage drops. They will never go up or stay the same when the percentage decreases.

Unless you're looking for the actual number of vB installations a year ago and today. But even with that, the comparison would be the same. There would be a drop of around 20%.

But you are correct in that you need the total number of sites surveyed to get the correct number of vB sites (from the percentage).

Snog said:

Percentage absolutely does tell the whole story.

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In both your examples, the total sites remained unchanged after a year. If the total sites changes, then the percent is not the whole story.

Andrew B. said:

In both your examples, the total sites remained unchanged after a year. If the total sites changes, then the percent is not the whole story.

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The total site numbers were just to demonstrate that the number of sites would be lower given the total number of sites and the percentage.

In other words if the total number of sites changes, AND the percentage drops, there has been a reduction in the number of vB sites.

So if a year ago the total number of sites was 1000 and the percentge was 68%, the total vB sites would be 680.

And if today, the total number of sites was 100 and the percentage is 48%, the total number of vB sites would be 48.

As I said, you do need the total number of sites to find the correct number of vB sites from the percentage.

The only person that can answer the number of sites surveyed is digitalpoint. But from what I read on the cookie page, it's millions of sites. So using 1,000,000 as a base number would probably be safe.

And I would have to think there is some consistency in the numbers, otherwise they mean nothing.

For the sake of discussion, let's say there are 100000 forums on the Internet. And vBulletin has 48% of this. That makes 48000 vBulletin forums.
Now let's say a year later there are 107000 forums in the Internet. And vBulletin has 46% of them. That makes 49220 vBulletin forums.
This is an example of how percent does not tell us the whole story, because in this example the VB percent went down while the VB total went up.

Now, obviously the count does not reflect the market share. That's why I corrected my original question.

I haven't looked at the underlying data in awhile (I never built an interface for doing that, so it involves doing SQL queries and stuff that I don't really feel like doing at the moment... haha), but last time I looked (a little more than a year ago), the overall number of forums on the Internet were (slowly) growing.

Which makes sense... most forums are very small and never really take off. And there are a ton of forums used by companies for support the the like.

digitalpoint said:

I haven't looked at the underlying data in awhile (I never built an interface for doing that, so it involves doing SQL queries and stuff that I don't really feel like doing at the moment... haha), but last time I looked (a little more than a year ago), the overall number of forums on the Internet were (slowly) growing.

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Thanks for jumping in. So it is possible that the increasing numbers could be mitigating (at least partially) a declining market share. But only if vBulletin is contributing to this growth. If you ever get bored enough to generate the totals, it would be interesting to see. Even if it's not as often as you do percents.

With the info from digitalpoint I'll agree with what you're saying.

It is possible that the number of vB sites has increased. But, the market share percentage would then indicate that people are opting for other forum software more often than going with vB.

I had made the poor assumption that the number of sites being visited was a fixed number. That was logical from a comparison standpoint, but was not true in reality.

I'm a vB customer as I still have a license for AVForums. I migrated to Xenforo in 2013 and only visit vB.com or vB.org very rarely these days to see how quiet it is and enjoy the reading odd feedback from a disgruntled customer. I haven't bothered selling my vB license because it's worth beans.
I think in general the number of forums is declining since people are using other platforms to socialise like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc.
Also if someone starts a forum on a particular topic expecting to make money, it's a long, uphill struggle even if you happen to be the first in the market, and if there is already an established forum for that topic, then forget it. A new forum will get nowhere against established competition unless it has a fantastic unique selling point.
So if the market for forums is saturated, then maybe that's another reason for a decline in sales.
Still there is vBulletin the market leader and at least two other strong competitors in the commercial platform sector plus several good free alternatives, so forums aren't dead, yet.
Still I think the forum platforms need to deliver something new to compete with the best alternatives without losing the core winning features.

Spinball said:

Still I think the forum platforms need to deliver something new to compete with the best alternatives without losing the core winning features.

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I agree. In fact I think it essential if forums want to relevant to tomorrow's users.

Spinball said:

I think in general the number of forums is declining since people are using other platforms to socialise like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc.
Also if someone starts a forum on a particular topic expecting to make money, it's a long, uphill struggle even if you happen to be the first in the market, and if there is already an established forum for that topic, then forget it. A new forum will get nowhere against establish competition unless it has a fantastic unique selling point.
.

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I do think while reddit/twitter/Fb/tumblr are powerful competitors, but I do want to say I don't think competing against a large forum is impossible or even overly difficult. It all matters the niche. Creating an anime forum today is insane to do because not only are there the LARGEST forums you also have 1000s of smaller but active communities and there is no differentiation. But in various niches, there are large forums who are simply the only player or one of a few players and that is your key. Nowadays, people want close knit and don't care about joining huge forums. It is why reddit is so popular. Along with the anonymity, you also get small communities able to pop up and grow. I can't even tell you how many people I've met through subreddits simply because it takes the whole micromanaging aspect of traditional forums out and places the power/control more so in the members hand. Its not about the fluff/designs and even advertisements, it's about the userbase.

A new forum can compete with a larger forum if it places the focus on the userbase, which larger forums do tend to forget, especially those ran by big companies.

I'm not surprised VB is losing market share. I'm disappointed with them, I had made a support request, official ticket. It is nearly 3 days with no reply to my support ticket. I have already decided to move from VB to Xenforo or BB. This kind of support is a big no no!

greatestmj said:

I'm not surprised VB is losing market share. I'm disappointed with them, I had made a support request, official ticket. It is nearly 3 days with no reply to my support ticket. I have already decided to move from VB to Xenforo or BB. This kind of support is a big no no!

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Sorry for this delay. If you care to post or PM me the ticket id # I'll see what the hold up is.

BirdOPrey5 said:

Sorry for this delay. If you care to post or PM me the ticket id # I'll see what the hold up is.

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I can message you the ticket ID, but then it isn't required. I have VB 4 license and that isn't enough for me. In my niche, I am getting 40%+ from smartphone so I need a responsive design. The reason few days back I was upgrading to VB 4 as I thought by now they would have made it responsive as today it is top priority and considering so many users of VB 4, it would be done. So I searched around and did not find a way. The only way is to upgrade to VB 5 and that costs $200. So if I take a fresh look, Xenforo costs 140$ with 1 year of upgrade and Burning Board costs $90 with totally my choice to spend anymore on upgrades or not. Both of these softwares are responsive and looks fresh and new. While VB 4 doesn't look fresh, looks similar to VB3 and is not even responsive. And many have said VB5 also has bugs and those are getting fixed. I believe VB 5 should not have been launched in a hurry if there were some problems that were planned to be fixed later. Cannot release a product fresh and new and say there are bugs to be fixed later. That is a single biggest disappointment for anyone who will pay 200$ to upgrade.

Anyways, really my point was better options are available at lower price is a selling point for Xenforo and BB. Thats why I kind of gave up and did not ask for more support or complained at all. It was just that I saw this thread and how rapidly VB was declining, I thought of sharing my experience from 3 days ago.

I think VB should revamp, fix all the problems told by people, listen to customers, enhance the software and most importantly give a lower cost upgrade to new verision, say VB 6. So the customers upgrade from 3 and 4 to 6, considering only 2% use VB 5. Move them all to VB 6 considering VB 6 is well developed and is forward looking and save the company the market share, infact grow from there. If a lot of people are still using VB 3 and VB 4 despite 2 years of VB5, then VB5 is not very good.

I apologise if I am at all rude or harsh. Just a bit disappointed as I'm a customer since 2006.

greatestmj said:

I think VB should revamp, fix all the problems told by people, listen to customers, enhance the software and most importantly give a lower cost upgrade to new verision, say VB 6. -.

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Never going to happen, which is why their market share is going down so fast.