Does Xenforo want to be Facebook?

[Stripey]

I know this seems like a funny question, but the ambition to be like Facebook is driving many of the design decisions at Invision, with which I take exception. I feel Facebook is a different medium than forums. Facebook posts are here today, gone tomorrow, good luck finding them again. Forum posts can be more long-form and enduring, with topics worth reviving after years. (Facebook is having its own problems maturing as a mass communications medium.)

As a company, what is Xenforo's philosophy about competing with Facebook?

 

[TimFL]

I feel that XenForo 2 is like one of the last true forum experience offerings. I‘ve checked out all available softwares out there and it feels like the most forumy forum out there (if that makes sense). It‘s a throwback to vB3 days.

I agree with the sentiment that IPS tries to bridge the gap between forums and social networks but I think they ended up generating bloatware that makes it incredibly hard for the average user to interact with. vB completely lost it somewhere during vB5 launch. It‘s like they have no idea what they are doing (I regulary monitor their updates cause I also own a vB license and used it a while ago).

Honestly, a forum + social network hybrid could work if done right though. I mean I could think of a few features that are social
networky by nature but could find incredibly high mainstream appeal if executed the right way.

 

[Stripey]

I agree.

My concern is whether Xenforo will be chasing Facebook-like interaction design (which Facebook itself is always changing), such as losing wayfinding features such as post numbering or message Inbox overview and message thread download. IPB 4.x deleted all these features.

All of those design decisions sacrificed findability in favor of Facebook-like streamlining, which in turn is in pursuit of instantaneous, evanescent communication along the lines of texting and Snapchat. The integrity and navigability of the thread is of less account than presentation of a single comment, the importance of which is presumed to be short-lived. Following this thinking, preservation of the thread is unnecessary overhead. (In keeping with these priorities, Facebook's content retrieval tools are awful.)

I have a site providing support for a medical condition. It is not a large site but it is important to people all over the world. Our old topics and posts are quite valuable. The long-form posts are as essential as the short community-building comments. I don't want to see findability and navigation of the forum format eroded by software design decisions pursuing a medium that presumes impermanence.

 

[TimFL]

I don‘t think that will happen and I also don‘t think that XF will venture that far away from the current design decisions (at least not until a new major version).

Software that try to mimic facebook are in for a rude awakening anyways: Zuckerberg already announced a huge initiative to revamp groups/communities on facebook to make it easier for communities to stay in touch. I assume they‘ll bring back threaded discussions and the likes (facebook had threaded discussions way back for groups).