Facebook Killing Forums

FreshFroot

Well-known member
Is Facebook ruining Forums?



I have been trying desperately to get my forum off the ground for a few years, and it seems nearly impossible and almost pointless. I think Facebook is too powerful and I continually wonder if there's any point in continuing the efforts.​
Even forums I used to visit years ago, that were doing really well, aren't doing so well, and I think it's because Facebook has everyone on it and it offers so much easy interaction.​
Anyone else having extreme difficulties?​

So I saw a user posting this on another site and it got me wondering. What does everyone here think about it.... Since we are all forum owners, how does FB impact your forum?

I know users have said that they tried to find ways to utilize FB to benefit them eg. FB Connect and FB Likes. But does this really work? Or what works for you?
 
Not really facebook can't replace Forums ....There are different kind of forums based on different communities and every forums has their own Purposes .
 
Don't use FB for anything. Not anymore.

I think it all depends on the niche. I feel being a resource provider it doesn't impact me too much because people will have to visit to download resources where on facebook they can't.

I personally think when forum products take the social trend by the balls and fully appreciate it's potential and implement solutions into their respected products I think we will see an increase in popularity with the forum product market. Let's be honest, and xenforo is the product I see touching upon the social aspects but there's still alot of areas which are un-tapped regarding social orientated features.

Facebook won't kill forums, the lack of thinking ahead, forward so to speak from developers will kill those respected products.
 
I don't see how Facebook could replace forums. Every board is unique, and has their own community to discuss a set topic (in most cases), where as Facebook is for your social life.
 
Yes its true Facebook stole a lot of forumusers, becaurse of its simplicity and ease of use. But I really think that XenForo will change that - becaurse XenForo is very userfriendly and it has the Like feature from facebook and the follow feature from twitter, those things will make people post more and follow more, which will bring back life to forums.

Keep it simple thats the key to success :)
 
Yeah, in a way I think the whole 'social' that is added to web sites that makes interacting with a site and sharing what you're doing now .. be a negative experience for forums, where it's required to put in more of an effort to participate. It's not a quick blog comment, it's a new thread where you type things out. It's not just clicking like, but you have to register to use it, etc.

I am not saying Facebook kill(ed) online communities, but I am saying the whole modern web has an effect on what used to be a more unique thing (having a community or being part of it).
 
If your community puts up valuable content then you will get visitors, they may just read and never join, but that is how busy people work, there are a LOT of lurkers that read forums for years but never join, so just keep putting up great content.

Some of the computing forums are far from dead, they have thousands of members who visit daily because geeks need help keeping their rigs running, especially gamers who push their computers to the hilt.
 
A search engine was how I found my first experience with a forum 10 years ago so there are good things to be said for having your site on them.

HOWEVER, when your focus as an admin becomes how to improve your ranking and not how to make things for your members better, than you've lost your true reason for being a forum admin.

Listen to your members, make them happy and your forum will do well.
 
I gave up on Facebook, due to the fact that so many of my friends from High School 35 years ago were asking me about events that took place decades ago, so I disabled my account.
 
Not really facebook can't replace Forums ....There are different kind of forums based on different communities and every forums has their own Purposes .

FB has a tendency to siphon off some demographics from forums, trying to be very PC here. As a poster had already noted, Xen might be a step in the path to halting that trend.

Down our local mall they have one of those pay by the hour computer setup thingies, the number of mouth breathers who sit on those things checking facebook for hours on end is amazing. As tech sites generally say, Facebook .. coralling the lame into one place. Still gives marketing departments another avenue to demonstrate they are actually doing something ....
 
It is not Facebook killing forums, it is the advance of technology that is killing forums, in addition to the fact that there are a thousand times more forums today than we had back in 2003.

It seems the only active members today are Black Hat Spam-E-O practitioners running automated forum posting bot scripts, they love forums as a place to dump links.
 
I think if your site has content and creates content, assembles information from various sources ... you'll be fine.
If your site is dedicated to chit chat, Facebook is probably a better option.
 
lets say if I'm looking for news, mods, styles of xenforo product
I am not going to search for that in facebook
i'll have to come to xenforo.com/community
all that matter for the user end is content
 
Yeah, but if users gain community at Facebook, they have less time to spend on forums, in addition, many users today are not like us old folk, all they have is an iPad or iPhone.

The kids today are into IM and text messaging, right, forums are not something they do.
 
Sometimes facebook reminds me of the game. Everyone keeps trying to get me to use it. :eek:

thegame.webp

I often have a make excuses because people won't accept that I don't do facebook.
 
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