Competition from Whatsapp, Telegram and Facebook

[AndreaMarucci]

It is undeniable that with the advent of messaging systems such as Whatsapp or Telegram, but also Facebook with groups, the activity on forums has decreased significantly.

Yet forums have incredible advantages over both messaging systems and Facebook groups where finding something, for example, is impossible.

I would like to understand from the development team, what are the next moves to face the competition of these systems and make a medium like the forum always current and usable.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[Mendalla]

Whatsapp

I don't see how a message/chat engine competes with forums? Does it have some kind of group feature where you can share and discuss posts in a threaded format? FB groups I get, even if I think they are kind of half-assed. I used to be on there and was in quite a few groups. But I always thought Whatsapp was similar to WeChat (Chinese messaging system that my wife uses) and while you can do group chats in it, they are quite different from a forum environment. They are formatted as chains of messages, not threads.

 

[Paul B]

What do you think should change in forum software to compete with WhatsApp and Telegram?

 

[Forsaken]

Loss of activity is generally a sign of lacking content, and that there is an issue with the community itself. What reasons does your community have to be active? Do you have people who are pushing activity, and engaging others to join the conversations.

WhatsApp and Telegram are not the same type of content as a forum; if you are losing activity to that, then there was an issue with the content you were offering.

Facebook is hit and miss; if you have a lot of people who are active on Facebook, and they decide to setup a group on Facebook they are less inclined to go to your site as they are already active on Facebook . Finding ways to keep your community engaged and giving them a reason for activity will often help with this, but it depends on the subject matter and focus of your forum.

There is nothing XenForo (or other forum software) can do to make every community compete against x, y and z platform. In just the last year I have seen people want XenForo to be more like Reddit, more like Facebook, more like Twitter, and more like Discord. It is literally an impossible task to expect a single software to compete against every other competing platform, especially when those platforms are not even of the same focus or type of content.

 

[Old Nick]

XenForo is busy competing with other forum platforms and they're doing pretty well on this!
And then wait for XF 3 when you can just post pictures in threads while blinking with XenForo augmented reality glasses!

 

[AndreaMarucci]

Loss of activity is generally a sign of lacking content

My board doesn't suffer of loss of activity. Mine is just a general consideration speaking with some members that find using WA or FB faster since they're basically lazy.

What do you think should change

Good question as always Brogan.

I understand that the forum has a lot of benefit over FB or WA but one of the main advantages of these ones is the simplicity and immediacy.

If there was a way to make the forum even more immediate and simple, especially when it comes to posting pictures, perhaps this would be useful.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or I don't know how to do it, but if a user wants to post an image on the forum, it would be nice if there was a system that automatically resizes it to a set width and posts it on the forum to avoid filling the forum with huge images.

It would also be great if there was an even faster way to post a discussion in a specific forum but I have no idea how to do that.

This would be a help and perhaps the best thing would be to have an app that would facilitate many things.

 

[Old Nick]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or I don't know how to do it, but if a user wants to post an image on the forum, it would be nice if there was a system that automatically resizes it to a set width and posts it on the forum to avoid filling the forum with huge images.

You can set a max width and/or height in your ACP

 

[AndreaMarucci]

You can set a max

Yes but this mean that if the image is wider, it won't be uploaded. What I mean is to have something that resize the image at the desired size.

 

[Old Nick]

Nope, images will be resized to the max you set.
I set 800x800 and in can upload a 4000x3000 image.

On the other hand, the weight in KB defined for the attachments prevents the uploading of files that would exceed this maximum

 

[AndreaMarucci]

Yes but I've set a max of 300Kb that is correct for a 1024 px wide image. I've tried to upload a bigger image and the error is that "the uploaded file istoo big to be processed by the server" so there's something I'm doing wrong probably. Can you show me your settings?

 

[AndreaMarucci]

Mine are

 

[Paul B]

300 KB is way too small.

Increase that value and the software will accept larger files and then resize them based on the maximum dimension settings.

Test in a demo if you want to try out some different values: https://xenforo.com/demo/

 

[DigNap15]

I don't really want my forum to be full of images and memes.

One of the main problems with forums is that the term forum is old fashioned
Younger ones have no idea what they are.

Reddit, Facebook, Instagram etc are world wide names that everyone knows.

Your forum name (eg mine is NZIssues.com) is only known to a few thosuand people.

 

[Kilt]

300 KB is way too small.

Increase that value and the software will accept larger files and then resize them based on the maximum dimension settings.

I set Maximum Attachment File Size to 8000 KB because many phones (unnecessarily) take very high megapixel photos. This allows big pictures to be uploaded to the server.

However, I then set Maximum Attachment Image Dimensions to 1000 x 1000 pixels, which will automatically resize the photos to those height and width dimensions. You could, of course, set it to less than 1000 x 1000 for a smaller resizing.

I got this solution from the Important Info section of this guide:

Unmaintained - A guide to Xenforo attachments / photos

Some useful info about attachments/fotos in Xenforo: Where are attachments stored? If you were used to vBulletin there was a setting if you want to store the attachments in the file system (doesn't stress your database) or in the database...

xenforo.com

 

[Orit]

What do you think should change in forum software to compete with WhatsApp and Telegram?

I think it's crucial to update the whats-new page, or create something new...
people today are looking for fast paced updates, immediate responses.
The forum setup is less popular as it can only be that much active.
A page with the latest content (latest threads (rather than posts) that have been posted in, latest resources, latest articles etc.) would be great with a button to display the replies (jump to new replies) in same page rather than in separate page.
Sort of similar to the facebook feed.

 

[dvduval]

What do you think should change in forum software to compete with WhatsApp and Telegram?

In the case of the original poster, it seems there mother tongue is not english. Integration of a translate link like Facebook would be helpful.

The ability to send voice messages or videos ability to compete. Just literally speaking a lot of other software has other ways to post information besides just text messages. And so people have found these methods to me a little more engaging.

Only being of the text is getting a little outmoded. Just have to say that people don't want to still be able to text but there are other ways to communicate the people enjoy too and forums them falling a little behind.

 

[webbouk]

Voice to text - it's the future

"Press button to speak/text"

 

[dvduval]

Voice to text - it's the future

"Press button to speak/text"

Sure just about everybody has been doing that for 10 years now. But hearing someone's voice and talking to someone in person can make someone feel even closer to a community. And forums are about community in many cases. Not just selling something or advertising things. A large majority of all popular apps have voice, video, etc.

It would be very interesting if we had some data on how voice and video increase user retention levels and the amount of time people stay on the site or app. And if they're spending more time in those places, that leaves less time for forums.

 

[webbouk]

The issue I see with voice recordings is they don't add to a searchable database of information which in my opinion is what forums are all about.
The information built up by the communities is what sets apart forums from the social media platforms. Try searching on FB for example re a certain topic or issue, then try the same search in a forum. The two are pole apart.

 

[Old Nick]

Imagine the time it would take to listen to this discussion for example... reading written content allows you to skip paragraphs, get to the point, quote, reread at a glance... And how listen to a piece of HTML code, how to copy/paste?