Are forums dying?

mysiteguy said:

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.

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It also creates a trail of words. Easy to look back on. Especially for higher ups who enjoy examining every bit of data when it comes to employee performance.

Anybody who used to visit forums since the 2000s knows what I mean. There were so many forums and sites to explore. You could see a new user any second.
Now thinking about the old good days makes me feel sad. I miss these days.

Why forums are dying is told already. But just to highlight the most important one: smartphones.

It used to be Facebook and co. which was the public enemy no. 1, but now smartphones took that role.
The problem is now bigger than it was before. Facebook took all the chit-chatters away and the traffic went down, but still as a forum you had a small chance to survive if you provided content. It still is like this, but there is now a much bigger problem.

Forums are not suitable for smartphones. Those damn small sized screens are the most important enemies of forums. Because of them you can't compete, even if you provide content. The small screens make it very uncomfortable.

One asked how to revolutionize forums. We need a way to display content in smaller scales. And that content must provid information. This is the 2nd point how to revolutionize. Forums are just so damn bad when it comes to find information. Nobody has the time to search for stuff in 10 year old threads. When was the last time you guys visited the forum-node of this topic, you went back 25 pages and scrolled the topics? A topic is hot as long as it is in the first thread_list page or maybe in the second one. But other than that, no people use the pagination to go back multiple pages in the node to see what topics were discussed earlier.

So all the stuff once was relevant, is gone again. The content you created lasted for a timeframe of that listing on 1st page of that node. Yeah, sure, google indexes it and by using the google search people my find that one particular thread. But be honest, what are the chances of that?

So what I am saying is, that not only forums must be made usable for smartphones (which is a hell of a job), forums must overthink their system how to save information. Because for information people will come back to your site again. People value information, IF you can make it happen to provide them, which forums can't right now (if the admin didn't do a unique tailored thing for their niche).

The problem with these kind of discussions is that the majority of what people believe comes from their experience of interacting with forums and not from verifiable data. That's understandable because from what I've seen, decent surveys on the subject are very few and far between and those that might provide any real insight tend to be costly to access.

My experience is that while many forums appear to be in decline, the number of people visiting forums in general terms remains the same. That of course is my perception of the way things are for me although the one and only survey I've seen recently (European based, published by https://www.statista.com/) seems to reinforce that to some extent.

What interests me more than the dying forum question is whether there has been a shift in the balance between forum contributors and consumers. Reliable data on that is even harder to find.

zappaDPJ said:

My experience is that while many forums appear to be in decline, the number of people visiting forums in general terms remains the same. That of course is my perception of the way things are for me although the one and only survey I've seen recently (European based, published by https://www.statista.com/) seems to reinforce that to some extent.

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Absolutely agree with this. My site is 15 years old. It's had it's ups and downs over time. Right now, we are up about 10% on daily registered members logging in. Our overall number of daily posts is only up about 5% over last year. More people are reading the forums but they aren't sharing as much as I would like.

sbjsbj said:

Forums are not suitable for smartphones. Those damn small sized screens are the most important enemies of forums. Because of them you can't compete, even if you provide content. The small screens make it very uncomfortable.

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Depends on the forum topic and target audience too. My forum/site have <10% phone + tablet audience visitor traffic while 90% is laptop/desktop. It has grown though use to be <2-4% phone + tablet. For my forum, most visitors would want to be on laptop/desktop for it anyway

Tracy Perry said:

I have a feeling that this hits the nail on the head. Most people are looking for information. They tend to not want to get involved in a discussion once they find it. It's like "Gimme my answer now dammit, and no, I don't want to talk about it".
Instead of a community of sharer's, it's becoming more of a community of takers that are dependent upon a very few number of contributors.

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indeed that is probably the real underlying reason though smartphones are part of that do as it's alot harder to do indepth discussion on a smartphone vs desktop for forums.

Maybe the overall reason comes down to just convenience and attention spans getting shorter. Smartphones for simple conversation that maybe one way or limited two way for digesting news/update feeds and folks not wanting to get into deep detailed conversations at all. That's why Q&A like sites like stackexchange and short text conversation like reddit, facebook, twitter etc are preferred.

You have young folks who can push out 100s of text messages per day. That takes up alot of time which isn't available anymore for deeper indepth forum discussions heh

Forums are quite complicated things to use on a smart phone when you think about it. If forums are ever truly going to suit mobile use, then they need change into being less complicated things for using... more basic by design. But that is never really going to happen with forums. The other side has been mentioned before already, how can you compete against sites like FB, Twitter and Reddit which have millions of users. It's obvious people will flock to sites where most users are present.

So even if a new forum software did come along that suited mobiles far better. It would still face the huge issue that people are going where most other users are. It's also a change in trend thing now, that forums are just not what new younger people coming on web today are looking to use any more.

Looking at voting cast more people now think forums are dying. If this same topic had of been started lets say a year-half ago - it would easy have won on "forum are not dying" votes. Even that shows a big shift in people realizing it is happening.

eva2000 said:

Depends on the forum topic and target audience too. My forum/site have <10% phone + tablet audience visitor traffic while 90% is laptop/desktop. It has grown though use to be <2-4% phone + tablet. For my forum, most visitors would want to be on laptop/desktop for it anyway

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True. But exceptions are exceptions. Your site is about a special case of a server setup. Not sure if people can use ssh connection via phones, but it is very unlikely that people do so. And because people come to your great site by trying to setup their servers, it is almost a given that they do so on their desktops or laptops.

GTB said:

Looking at voting cast more people now think forums are dying. If this same topic had of been started lets say a year-half ago - it would easy have won on "forum are not dying" votes. Even that shows a big shift in people realizing it is happening.

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This question was posed 12 years ago when MySpace was on the rise. It was posed 8 years ago when Facebook was taking off. It was posed 4 years ago when Twitter was the rising star. The gloom and doomers were saying the end was near for forums all those years.

sbjsbj said:

True. But exceptions are exceptions. Your site is about a special case of a server setup. Not sure if people can use ssh connection via phones, but it is very unlikely that people do so. And because people come to your great site by trying to setup their servers, it is almost a given that they do so on their desktops or laptops.

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I think this is part of the problem for some people on here who can't get their forums off the ground. Find a niche that benefits from greater, in-depth discussion. Those sites seem to be doing well. Just last night, I had to search for a specific football rule. On the first page of Google were several different sites. The only sites that had the correct information were two different officiating forums. Great information that could never be found on Facebook, Twitter, or a static website.

I have been involved in forums for a little over 30 years now (as have some others here). I have a few observations...

Forums have always been overshadowed in the popular press by easier-to-explain vehicles: first, it was "chat rooms," then "blogs," then "like us on Facebook." Even people who like and use forums regularly have trouble articulating why they like them.

People come for the information, but stay for the community. If information was really king, wikis would rule.

It is easier to build a forum if you can tie into an existing IRL community or network.

Forum owners tend to measure "success" by total post count or total members—gotta have a million post to be successful, wanna be a "big board," etc. Better (but harder) is to measure the degree of engagement, the quality of the interactions.

There probably is (if Dunbar is to be believed) and optimal size for a forum community— I think that it is between 50 and 200 active users.

Forums, in general are dying. However, I think that there is a chance that, as society becomes more divided (which I personally believe it is) more and more people will seek refuge in online communities. Whether that is a good thing or not is another question entirely.

After reading the other thread on this subject and thinking about it, it's pretty clear to me why forum popularity has declined the last 10 years or so: Smart phones.

Look at the graph below from Google Trends. Forums topped nearly exactly the month Iphone was released, went flat then down.

(ref: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=forum)

And I don't think this problem is permanent. More people use the web now for information more often, if forums can improve broadly I think the trend can be turned. Many forums today (I would say most?) are still not mobile friendly.

Maybe the harsh reality is that forum was never a popular search term.



I always find a forum when googling for an android issue or windows issue. We've all been on apple user forums, android forums and seven forums....

But I don't Google for forum, then look for a windows forum for support.

I know my own forum is far more effective for long tail than its name, or even it's main purpose.

Yes but you still get an idea of the trend. Where it's going. I think they got enough data to show accurate trend, and many on this forum is seeing decline too... And btw, Google trends include all search queries with forum in it. Like "Windows support forum".

zappaDPJ said:

The problem with these kind of discussions is that the majority of what people believe comes from their experience of interacting with forums and not from verifiable data. That's understandable because from what I've seen, decent surveys on the subject are very few and far between and those that might provide any real insight tend to be costly to access.

My experience is that while many forums appear to be in decline, the number of people visiting forums in general terms remains the same. That of course is my perception of the way things are for me although the one and only survey I've seen recently (European based, published by https://www.statista.com/) seems to reinforce that to some extent.

What interests me more than the dying forum question is whether there has been a shift in the balance between forum contributors and consumers. Reliable data on that is even harder to find.

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I check number of posts on big French and american forums monthly since 2008, and I see there is a decline on almost all of them

The number of visits is the same (or in expansion because of the multi devices), but the number of page views is declining.

sdev said:

After reading the other thread on this subject and thinking about it, it's pretty clear to me why forum popularity has declined the last 10 years or so: Smart phones.

Look at the graph below from Google Trends. Forums topped nearly exactly the month Iphone was released, went flat then down.
View attachment 44659
(ref: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=forum)

And I don't think this problem is permanent. More people use the web now for information more often, if forums can improve broadly I think the trend can be turned. Many forums today (I would say most?) are still not mobile friendly.

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September 2007 is the month where facebook goes over forum on google trends

I will not say "forum are dying" but I will say they are challenged by social media and because they are not mobile friendly, and they have to change to survive.

Rather than looking over statistics why not just ask the admins on here if their forums are thriving or have become a grave marker in the great forum cemetery?

Are their forums old and established, or are they new? If old and established how many members are actually active? If new, are new members registering at a rate that you are happy with and, more importantly, are they actively contributing?

Statistics will most likely take into account business based forums which often serve as a customer services portal; people will join up to ask a question or raise a complaint, it's unlikely that they are looking for meaningful everyday discussions. More businesses are using forums for gathering information, taking stock of complaints and probably basing future product releases based on the questions asked. Remove these from the analytics and get back to the grassroots forums that the people here on TAZ have built and a clearer picture may emerge as to how well forums are faring in the face of the social media monoliths.

Google may state that many forums are springing up, but what they don't tell you is how active, if at all, they are; just that they exist.

https://theadminzone.com/threads/ea...o-forums-any-ideas.141703/page-5#post-1068307

My stats from 2006 to today

It does`t get enough attention from people and user interface is not known to most of all.