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

[s.molinari]

What I don't understand is......there seems to be absolutely no "push" to get vB back into a successful business. Usually, you can tell, when things start to happen towards that goal, even if mistakes are made trying (which will happen). I don't think anyone would call the monotonous release of bug fixes with the occasional addition of a minor feature as any kind of "push", would you? It is like IB has also given up or are not risking anything and are now simply shooting for less witting customers to trip into the vB trap. If all this is true, what kind of business is that other than a dying one?

Scott

 

[Digitalpoint]

No one cares about fixing vBulletin... and probably rightfully so. They don't have the *ability* to do it, and there's very little point in figuring out how to get the ability. KKR does about $9B/year in business... Internet Brands is a small division of theirs, doing closer to $100M revenue. Let's round it to Internet Brands being 1% of KKR's revenue. I don't know what vBulletin's annual revenue is these days, but I'd guess it's a safe bet to say it's $1M or less.

So at the end of the day, who cares if a division that's 0.01% of the parent company's revenue does or doesn't do anything. Is it worth putting forth any effort whatsoever? lol Probably not.

 

[s.molinari]

Yeah, if you look at it from that perspective, it is a reason for the lack of "push".

Oh well.

Scott

 

[dieKetzer]

except corporations are notorious for counting pennies. its very unlikely they would be willing to turn a blind eye to something that isnt being monetised to its maximum potential.

 

[s.molinari]

its very unlikely they would be willing to turn a blind eye to something that isnt being monetised to its maximum potential.

That is probably why we also won't see a replacement for Zach.

Scott

 

[Digitalpoint]

except corporations are notorious for counting pennies. its very unlikely they would be willing to turn a blind eye to something that isnt being monetised to its maximum potential.

Probably just about prioritizing... pull the good developers off the vBulletin project and put them on something better suited to make more money. Corporations with billions of dollars in revenue aren't looking around to maximize the revenue of a product that makes pretty much nothing on the grand scale of things.

They are looking to make completely new products/industries.

Maybe Apple could sell a few more Apple TVs for $10 more than the normal one if they offered them in different colors... but not worth the effort. They are more interested in spending time developing something like the Apple Watch, where they could make $10B/year vs. $500k with colored AppleTVs. lol

 

[PacMan]

I

So, as of today (17th Jan. 2014), we have:

Commercial Forum Platforms - relative marketshare
vBullentin – 68.3%
xenForo – 20.1%
Invision – 11.5%

Commercial Forum Software Migrations - detected migrations
vB to xF – 73.4% xF to vB – 5.1% = xF gain of 68.3%
IPB to xF 10.1% xF to IPB 8.9% = xF gain of 1.2%
VB to IPB 2.5% [none appear to have gone the other way) = IPB gain 2.5%

Vb5 share of the overall vB market remains under 1%, at just 0.9%

March 17 stats

Commercial Forum Platforms - relative market share
vBullentin – 55.5% (Loss of 12.8% when compared to Jan 17, 2014)
xenForo – 31.0% (Gain of 10.9% when compared to Jan 17, 2014))
Invision – 12.3% (Gain of 0.8% when compared to Jan 17, 2014))
Burning Board - 1.2% (New entry)

Commercial Forum Software Migrations - detected migrations
vB to xF – 71.7% xF to vB – 3.8% = xF gain of 67.9%
IPB to xF 13.6% xF to IPB 5.6% = xF gain of 8%
VB to IPB 4.5% IPB to VB 0.7 = IPB gain 3.8%

VB5 share of the overall vB market has doubled to 1.9%

Vbulletin loses close to 1% of the market share per month and if this continues, it is on track to have less than 50% market share by this fall.
Xenforo keeps on gaining market share while IPB market share is stable with little growth.
IPB4, which is still not "gold" has 5% of the overall IPB market.

 

[is_it_me]

I posted that on 17th Jan. 2015, you'll see in that year vB lost on average just over 0.8% share per month, hence it looked like it would take more than another 6 months to drop from 58% to under 50%.

However, they are now down to 56.8%, a drop of 1.2% in the last month, so the game is on as to if the 50% mark is hit in just under or just over 18 months since the thread was started.

Oh, and xF is over the 30% mark now, up 1.1% in a month to 30.7%.

^^^ That I posted on 18th Feb. 2015.

As PatMan has pointed out, vB is now at 55.5%, a drop of 1.3% in a month, however this larger drop is likely to be partly due to Burning Board being added to the cookie search, so we can't read too much into it.

 

[Caleb Luca]

I am curious as to

A. The purpose of this thread? Like what purpose does this serve as from what I've read on the few pages I read before I got sick of some of the comments, it appears there is nothing really of value aside for what seems like bragging rights?

B. I am aware this is a commercial platform but I'd be curious to see a general comparison between not only Vbulletin, IPB, Burning Board, and Xenforo but also with the inclusion of SMF, Phpbb, and Mybb in comparison. It makes me wonder would these results be a lot different.

From what I gather from this, this is only comparing Vbulletin to commercial products where the pool is larger and it shows that there are many migrations TO Xenforo and to IPB to a lesser extent. I'd be curious to see what Free software users such as myself are migrating to and how much we're migrating and would these alter the numbers? It seems presently speaking these results are only accurate in a narrow point of view but nothing to actually show anything SUBSTANTIAL other than showing Vbulletin is losing market share rapidly. Of course market share isn't necessarily 100% indicative of success either.

 

[s.molinari]

I'd love to know these things too.

Unfortunately, Digitalpoint's cookie tracking system doesn't track the migrations, upgrades or the software versions of free forum software. So, we'll never know.

Of course market share isn't necessarily 100% indicative of success either.

The trend of market share (which this thread is about) is very much indicative of the product or service on the market. If you are gaining market share, you have a successful product or service. If you are losing market share, you are most likely doing something wrong. The gain of market share itself, however, doesn't show overall success as a business. You might be selling under cost and losing money to gain that market share.

And still having the largest market share and boasting "we are the world's leading software" can also be a downright lie, depending on what "leading" is supposed to mean.

Scott

 

[LeadCrow]

I am curious as to

A. The purpose of this thread?

It's a periodic summary of the changes detected by DP's script. The purpose of the summaries is to and validate wether opinions regarding marketshare trends, use and migrations, are substantiated by quantifiable data instead of just loud commentary. Users also comment on those variations and the potential reasons behind the current numbers and their future evolution. A lot of their reasoning was previously shared and dismissed, so the availability of somewhat exhaustive numbers make it more difficult to dismiss now.

Truth be told, the numbers could use simpler commentary: the number of forums keeps expanding, vb used to dominate but its use plateaued at v3 and v4 (v5 is generally skipped), and vBS' competitors increase their market at its detriment (with XF the largest beneficiary of this movement, albeit free scripts like MyBB too likely get a lot of 'refugees'), and the trend will accelerate suddenly as webhosts drop old PHP versions. /thread

On an aside, It's be interesting to have a reference listing of the largest site(s) detected per commercial forum script, or just the one with the highest Alexa ranking. digitalpoint

 

[Alpha1]

or just the one with the highest Alexa ranking.

Seriously? Alexa ranking has no significance at all. Low Alexa ranking is good in the sense that it means that the site blocks problematic users..

 

[we_are_borg]

Alexa is that still being used at all, it was crap when it was introduced and well if it still exist its still crap.

 

[is_it_me]

Time for the monthly update.

As PatMan has pointed out, vB is now at 55.5%, a drop of 1.3% in a month, however this larger drop is likely to be partly due to Burning Board being added to the cookie search, so we can't read too much into it.

^^^ That I posted on 18th Mar. 2015.

vB has dropped to 53.9%, the largest monthly drop since I started the thread 17th Jan. 2014 - at 1.6%.

So, every chance it'll drop below 50% within the 12-18 month time frame, adding BB to the Cookie Search has speeded-up the decline.

For the record:
vB - 53.9%
xF - 31.0%
IPB - 12.6%
BB - 2.4%

 

[Danielx64]

I reckoned that it will drop below 50 in the next 90 or so days.

 

[Klaatu]

 

[Anonymous]

View attachment 34275

Bad news doesn't sound as bad when you get it while on your $10 Million Yacht sailing around your private island.

 

[KimmiKat]

It's like the Cumulus Media broadcasting company that buys many radio stations and strips them down to non-stop sponsored programming and low rated stuff. For example the wreck the once great SF talk station, KGO radio. IB could be like the Cumulus of mboard companies.

except corporations are notorious for counting pennies. its very unlikely they would be willing to turn a blind eye to something that isnt being monetised to its maximum potential.

 

[Sherrie]

Ooh and it looks like most of that swing has gone to burning board, xenforo has remained at 31%

 

[vbresults]

digitalpoint Instead of spidering sites on your own, why not simply use BuiltWith data?