Facebook Killing Forums

[dutchbb]

Nonsense. Big sites like Facebook can never reach the smaller niche markets, just like Amazon can't be the best specialized store for every product in the world. It's just a lame excuse if you blame Facebook for not having success with your site/forum.

The web these days consists of divided communities, Facebook is just one of many. There will always be opportunities for new sites/communities.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I think "forums" aren't all that well designed. The information is hard to find. Traditional Forums are almost as guilty as Facebook as they "don't produce anything". Just chit chat. I think forums need to re-invent themselves. I don't think vBulletin will be the forum to re-invent itself.

 

[Paul B]

Forums are almost as guilty as Facebook as they "don't produce anything". Just chit chat.

I wouldn't agree with that at all.
A lot of forums produce content; the Add-on Releases forum here for example.

 

[Digital Doctor]

A lot of forums produce content

got any urls ?

the Add-on Releases forum here for example.

I would say the addons are made by developers on their computers and attached to the forums.
I wouldn't really call it Community-produced content.
In the context of Facebook killing forums, I don't think Facebook will make addons, and this isn't the "lost traffic" people are worried about.

Forums are not designed to encourage community-driven content production.
I hope xenforo will see the light and move forum communities forward. Pages was an example of some progress in the right direction. Not nearly enough mind you.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Forums are not designed to encourage community-driven content production.

That is not true at all, in the early days of webmaster and SEO forums there were a ton of great writers and content, fantastic blockbuster threads were created daily, the threads were very interesting to readers and authors alike due to the fact that Google was generating a lot of interest in those days.

When forum administrators allowed blatant signature spammers to enter the webmaster community, a lot of these vibrant discussions seemingly disappeared from the scene, as these morons polluted threads with idiotic posts (to expose signature links) causing the main writers to lose interest in the forums due to bad management (I witnessed this at Sitepoint and DigitalPoint both).

Today we have a much different set of people on webmaster forums (con men, criminals and street thugs) who think it is cool to discuss automated spamming and other Black Hat Spam-E-O techniques which is the poison that has ruined a lot of forums today.

 

[Lucas]

Lets just create a Farmville flash game for forums.

 

[Shelley]

Lets just create a Farmville flash game for forums.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

 

[random]

Facebook will kill your forum if you don't move to XenForo

 

[HannahP]

Forums are not designed to encourage community-driven content production.

Forums don't do anything. They just sit there waiting for a human to do something. If your forum isn't producing content, then your forum users don't want "content."

To say that "forums" as a whole are nothing but inconsequential small-talk is ridiculous. Dozens of people have cited one of my forums in research papers, including a couple of Masters degree theses. I'm not too bright, I only went to high school (and that just barely), but I'm pretty sure that most people would be hesitant to site a forum in their Masters thesis if all forums were merely "chit-chat."

 

[AnthonyCea]

I have members who are only interested in one particular forum, it is the only one he actively posts in and reads, so every forum has focus groups and users that come to either read or participate in subjects of special interest, even though this member has narrow interests, he is still one of the best members, his threads bring in a lot of traffic to us from search engines because it is unique content.

 

[Eagle]

It looks like slow motion on all discussion forums, boards, community message boards so while people seem to spend more and more time on facebook. I strongly dislike facebook, particularly when people that you really don't know want to make contact with you. In a real case scenario, a jealous partner could become suspicious of ones internet activities. I find the thing rather intrusive too. Also there is the time factor; on a forum such as this I may spend an average of 40 minutes per day, which I find acceptable but some people are totally fixed to facebook for hours on end. Little wonder that the tendancy for being overweight is on the increase, particularly among youngsters and they find it harder to obtain real friends because they are not developing real social skills. For real friends, send them a personal email or phone them or even visit them! I prefer to get out and meet people face to face and one new real friend is worth a hundred cyber ones. That said, it has its place when used sensibly I suppose.

One main reason is facebook 'cause it offers so much and also the users could create groups etc within the site, the usage of forums have gone down. but still if the content is good enough the users who really get something out of the active forum conversations will stick to it. A forum conversation is more on thread but facebook has many distractions when compared to a forum. I really don't like facebook it 'cause people being lazy to increase their acknowledge especially in forum that can be useful if we can manage it. sometimes people just seeking fun but don't know the benefits of it. Keep sharing on mailing list and Forum don't be junk by facebook, is that really right?

I said, I don't like facebook it 'cause I think, people who loves to facebook? Of course a lot of lazy people and shorty lover guys loves to that site. Of course this is not an immoral thing, because this is the matter of taste. I don't have a bad intent 'cause everyone is free all yours respectfully. However I think it, is facebook killing forums. Please don't use it "like this" in your forums. Please don't use it "join us on facebook" 'cause you will never vin, you will lose all the time if you use that in your forums. Why? Reason... You cannot get it "hit" from facebook, rather you losing...

 

[CTXMedia]

I once had a discussion in a pub about the usefulness of Facebook and argued that it can be quite a shallow place where people simply try to rack-up friends to make themselves look/feel popular. (I know of a good number of real-world examples where the people are absolutely nothing like the persona they put forward on Facebook - and I mean that in a negative way!!!).

Anyway, as an experiment I set-up a Googlemail account and signed up to Facebook. I then randomly started making friends requests to see how many friends I could amass in a month. Not going at it hammer an tong, just a few requests per day. Once a couple of people added my fake persona to their friends list it became easier and easier. And the more people who were friends with each other, the more of their friends had no problem in adding me too. By the end of the experiment I had hundreds of friends - all for a completely fake ID.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't abuse their friendship, and bowed-out gracefully and simply at the end of the experiment so noboby was hurt in the process, but it was incredible to think that so many people were happy to befreind someone they'd never met, never researched, and just took it on trust.

I don't know whether it's a good thing that people are so open and trusting, or whether it leaves them vulnerable; but it's interesting how the scrable for more "virtual friends" on Facebook can override some simple stop and checks that we might otherwise employ in real-world friendship building.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[mrGTB]

I think trends have simply just changed with the new younger Internet generation, forum boards are not popular tools for talking on anymore with them.

 

[Deleted member 745]

How can it kill forums, its not forum software... I've used it before and I hate it, never going back to it again.... why's it called facebook anyway its not a book.

 

[HannahP]

I think trends have simply just changed with the new younger Internet generation, forum boards are not popular tools for talking on anymore with them.

That's a dangerous assumption, and I don't see any evidence to support it.

Facebook and forums are two different animals. If you want to claim that Facebook is siphoning off inconsequential chatter from a forum, you may be able to make a case. But Facebook would have absolutely no effect on a serious discussion forum because it cannot - and does not attempt to - replace a serious discussion forum.

If your forum traffic is down Facebook is a convenient scapegoat, but perhaps not always a valid one.

 

[mrGTB]

That's a dangerous assumption, and I don't see any evidence to support it.

Facebook and forums are two different animals. If you want to claim that Facebook is siphoning off inconsequential chatter from a forum, you may be able to make a case. But Facebook would have absolutely no effect on a serious discussion forum because it cannot - and does not attempt to - replace a serious discussion forum.

If your forum traffic is down Facebook is a convenient scapegoat, but perhaps not always a valid one.

Hmm, where exactly did I mention Facebook?

I think trends have simply just changed with the new younger Internet generation, forum boards are not popular tools for talking on anymore with them.

 

[Mark.B]

Facebook kills *some* forums, especially those where the staff get power-crazy, and also where the owners plaster it with intrusive adverts. But, if facebook wasn't there, these sites would be killed anyhow.

Forums are actually thriving, just in different ways. When I set mine up, (2002), the members I catered for had a choice of basically two sites...mine or the site I "broke away" from (Tiscali, then a UK ISP). No other forums would have been of the slightest interest to what was then still a relatively unusual group of people (mainly ex-nntp/usenet types) who wanted to talk in forums.

These days there are 47,634,075,267.25 forums on the net, and that's excluding the pr0n ones!

Plus anyone can run off in a huff, grab a copy of phpBB or something rubbish like that alongside a GoDaddy rubbish utter cack free hosting account, and set up a silly "rival" forum, if they so choose.

The market for forums has been watered down dramatically but those who know how to do it and know their market can still make them work. It's just more effort these days often for little return and sometimes people lose interest.
.

 

[HannahP]

Hmm, where exactly did I mention Facebook?

So take Facebook out of the equation then. I don't see the evidence that younger people shy away from forums. What are you basing your statement on?

Most of the biggest forums in the world are mainly populated by the "younger internet generation" (look at the top of that list; anime, gaming, picture rating). Maybe a lot of 40 and 50 year olds hang out on 4chan. What do I know.

 

[Abdulaziz Al-Subaie]

Hah facebook like the disease

 

[anotheralias]

I think Twitter is more of a danger than Facebook. You sign up once, you aren't required to give out a lot of personal information, you can follow anyone you like without their permission, and one witty remark on a trending topic can get you way more attention than a month's worth of SEO drudgery will get you for your forum.

That's why I was totally behind the idea of being able to link up forums (I forget the technical term now) - some deal where people could sign up once and be able to post in all the forums that are involved.