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How many?
Are forums dying?
- Thread starter CarpCharacin
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at one point probably had 20 or so branched off into niches, running on auto pilot (randomizing content) and lacked a certain quality that comes with a personal touch. you could also tell they weren't updated enough and I didn't hire content producers for them.
no point in running sites that you can't put ample time into, can't hire out with quality updates/content, or can't automate with quality updates/content.
should really focus on doing your site, having fun with it, and ask less questions in which the answer doesn't really matter nor help you.
forums need a spark or a revolution, and there's an entire thread on this already, but if that's what you want to do and enjoy, then do it. if you can get it to work, then that's even better.
success is measured by three things - the amount of money you earn with something, and the amount of joy that you get from doing it, and the effect you have on the users by giving them an enjoyable product or experience. If you can nail at least two of those three and at least break even - then you'll be fine.
if you hate your site, then quit.
if you're losing money, then quit.
if people hate the product, then quit.
and start over.
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you have to define what you mean by successful and what you mean by dying
Forums should be created to serve a purpose or fulfill a need / help provide a solution for it's members. If it does that, then it should be considered successful regardless of how many posts or members the forum has
With exception of 0 additional members and no posts of course 
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I have a client who sold a 12,000,000+ post board for over a million dollars only a few months ago. Since then - he has proceeded to invest in 2 big boards with millions of posts with 1000s of members producing 1000s of posts per month. He has just purchased another board that has 1,220,000 posts. At any time this forum seems to have 1000+ visitors with 100s of registered users logging in daily, 100s of new users registering on a weekly basis. I'm working on transferring it to his own server and will likely be converting it to Xenforo in the coming days.
I think if you'd ask him if forums are dying, he'd definitely say no. I think if you ask anyone who makes a substantial living running forums if forums were dying, they'd likely tell you no as well.
I think what happens a lot is that new forum owners go into "the forum game" with the thought that theirs will become internet gold. When this doesn't happen -- whether because of lack of motivation in getting members active, or lack of regularly gaining new members, or something as mundane & common as simple lost interest in the project or for whatever assortment of reasons -- they close their forums down, calling it a loss, thinking that forums are actually dying when that may not be the case at all.
Fact is ... The internet is booming and will continue to thrive as far as I can tell. Therefore - forums with motivated ownership will continue to thrive as well.
J.
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Look at this chart. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=forums
Notice the slide starting in 2009/2010?
Notice the slide starting in 2009/2010?
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doesn't mean much add term facebook and if you interpreted it your way facebook would be in decline
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It kind of still flat lines forums. But do people really need to Google Facebook?
i think success is relative to the niche, i run the most active forum in my niche for a private group, more active by a huge margin, in that regard it's a "success", however the posts are only 300-1000 a day, (all on topic as we have no off topic), we've been going for 5 years this December with a 90% member retention rate, however looking at forums as a single commodity it's far from a success compared to larger forums.
It provides a service for the niche that site slike facebook, reddit etc never could, going head on with the big sites is like tossing yourself in front of a moving bus, sure it sounds cool, but you will come off worse than the bus, the way to avoid "forum death" is to provide content that people want to interact with.
On my roleplay site for example we have a Game of thrones "inspired" roleplay, with over 1000usd of custom xenforo addons made for it by a member who is a developer, over 100 unique graphics/images, house contributed by a professional graphic designer who is part of the game too.
Facebook in this example doesn't have those immersion features, however if i tried to compete as a general chat or video game news site FB would bury me
It provides a service for the niche that site slike facebook, reddit etc never could, going head on with the big sites is like tossing yourself in front of a moving bus, sure it sounds cool, but you will come off worse than the bus, the way to avoid "forum death" is to provide content that people want to interact with.
On my roleplay site for example we have a Game of thrones "inspired" roleplay, with over 1000usd of custom xenforo addons made for it by a member who is a developer, over 100 unique graphics/images, house contributed by a professional graphic designer who is part of the game too.
Facebook in this example doesn't have those immersion features, however if i tried to compete as a general chat or video game news site FB would bury me
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well how many folks google for forums too ? i know i don't. I find forums from their attached web sites and if i like them add site and forums to my bookmarks
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Forums are dying in such way that not many are made per year then lets say 10 years ago. The time of 1000+ posts a day are for most forums over only the special forums in a special niche will do well. Dying in this case means less people post or visit forums, from website owner standpoint its more do i make a forum or do i want a non forum site. More and more people flee to Facebook but from a discussion standpoint its crap to use a forum gives structure and a good overview of the discussions going on, with Facebook its disorganized groups are the same as all other pages. There will be growth in niches that are special but decline in lets say automobile discussions, sites that are small will merge and continue for some time.
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"Own the niche - a specialty niche - then your shyt won't die.. Try general chat and get buried..."
Is this the magic answer? It's a good one!
J.
Is this the magic answer? It's a good one!
J.
Well, talking about if forums are dead. See today that AdminCrowd closed down.
https://www.admincrowd.com/
https://www.admincrowd.com/
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There is a before and after facebook (2009/2010) and i check many forum stats : the smallest ones suffer most. And the specialized ones resist more.
What you can see is there is less chit chat / off topics, and the discussion tends to be more focus.
I have several communities on my forum, and some created facebook groups, and I see this in the stats : before and after the creation of the group.
If one of your community is very small and tend to produce many messages or to produce many off topics messages, when 1 or 2 leave, there is a big impact.
+ more and more mobile users, and forums are not much easy to consult on mobile
+ more and more adblocks and you tend to have less and less information about your users in your stats (because many do even block the tracking)
+ less and less ad revenues.
Facebook is not dying but aging. The younger ones are on youtube, instagram or even snapchat... I see it when I check the demography of the facebook page I manage.
The forum have an old design, an old ergonomy and tend to be very unfriendly for younger generations, but I have not seen any forum software that tried to revolutionnize this.
What you can see is there is less chit chat / off topics, and the discussion tends to be more focus.
I have several communities on my forum, and some created facebook groups, and I see this in the stats : before and after the creation of the group.
If one of your community is very small and tend to produce many messages or to produce many off topics messages, when 1 or 2 leave, there is a big impact.
+ more and more mobile users, and forums are not much easy to consult on mobile
+ more and more adblocks and you tend to have less and less information about your users in your stats (because many do even block the tracking)
+ less and less ad revenues.
Facebook is not dying but aging. The younger ones are on youtube, instagram or even snapchat... I see it when I check the demography of the facebook page I manage.
The forum have an old design, an old ergonomy and tend to be very unfriendly for younger generations, but I have not seen any forum software that tried to revolutionnize this.
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I don't know, I am no developper, but I think there are some good features on social media :
Check twitter, you know in real time how many new posts there is, and you just have to scroll down to make them appear. Maybe some forums have it.
Check the possibility to create and manage your own groups on facebook, maybe forums should allow that. A big forum in France allow that : http://www.forumjv.com/
What you need for a forum is to allow people to interact, share information and find information. These are the basic requirements
Check twitter, you know in real time how many new posts there is, and you just have to scroll down to make them appear. Maybe some forums have it.
Check the possibility to create and manage your own groups on facebook, maybe forums should allow that. A big forum in France allow that : http://www.forumjv.com/
What you need for a forum is to allow people to interact, share information and find information. These are the basic requirements
Search term forum != traffic. My sites (ranging from a few hundred to a few million monthly visitors) have NEVER had the word "forum" ranking as the highest ranking keywords. The top terms are and have always been topic keyword related terms, like "keyword help", "keyword repair", "keyword info", "keyword parts", "where to get keyword", etc. It's the same for my big board clients. The decline in "keyword forum" will continue as search engines continue get better at delivering relevant results..
A rather large social networking study has shown forum participation rates with Internet users has gone up, not down.
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We all know that social sites get a lot of traffic because how they are designed. But no forum software is rewriting how forums should work its all the same as 16 years ago.
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Thanks, it is what I wanted to say.
And there are many obstacles : the messages are produced by the old users, and old users don't want changes, so we don't push for changes, because we don't want to make our old users angry and quit.
Because we protect our old active users with old designs, we have difficulties to make new / younger ones come to our forums.
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Okay, so then why does Facebook and the like keep being suggest as the ones that cause online forums to decline?
You have proof of this?
https://www.forrester.com/report/Your+Customers+Dont+Want+To+Call+You/-/E-RES131922
Forester Research is no slouch when it comes to data. If you work for a larger company they might already be a client should you decide it's not worth the cost of the study --- many won't since it's primarily from a marketing point of view, why larger companies should embrace forums and other types of social networking.