Forum culture changing

[Nudaii]

been thinking on this last couple of days, my forum for a majority of its lifespan and even now is a invite only affair, the core members from 12 years ago are still posting, new members have joined but in basic the culture of the board is changing.

back when i was 18, co admin was 19, and most members 13-20 it was the age of more is more, arcades, galleries, bling bling, fancy addons galore, over the years and as the next gen of writers joined us i found more and more no one cared about those addons, and we began develping instead addons that present in new and more precise ways the threads/content of the forum.

while we have several unique addons to do things like houses/guilds, they exist as they are strongly tied to the stories we are telling in the role plays, and are used to add depth to the threads/content and not provide all new features.

i was curious if any others found their forum culture changed rapidly over the years?

 

[Jake Bunce]

I think forum sites went through a phase where they were insecure in themselves. They sought out peripheral features in order to feel more complete, but these features had little value and went largely unused. Over time content became more important than presentation.

 

[snoopy5]

I do think that everything is influenced by the device you are using to read and post in a forumsoftware and the time we have in general to do "social thing".

15 years ago, everybody had a PC or laptop. There was enough space to "show off" with many addons etc.

Today and above all in the future, PCs and laptops are "dead". The young people are not interested in buying a PC. They have a samrtphone and tehy wantt o use it for everything. So if your design does not fit into the smartphone screen and/or is to heavy and to slow to display fast on the smartphone, you will not survive with your forum.

At the same time people want to to more things in less time. Stress is everywhere. So Nobody has time today, to read long stories. Everything which is fast, lean and easy to digest wins. This is why Facebook, Twitter, snapcht etc. have their growth rate.

We as forum users and the XF developers need to think about how we want to address this new behaviour.

We need a kind of "double track" strategy. The XF forum software of the future has to have features that are usable for people who still use PCs (i.e. in the office) and at the same time teh same design, has to excellent for smartphones. Fast, easy to use, the most important buttons where you need them on the small smartphone screen etc.

If we address this new culture in internet usage, traffic will rise again also for forumsoftware.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Google has weighed in on the usefulness of threads to it's users. And the results are not good.

It would have been bad PR for google to kill forums instantly. No one will even notice the slow kill.

 

[snoopy5]

Google makes it smart. They overweight blogs, which are in most cases small, easy to digest articles, easy to read on smartphones and easy to place adsense banner in it