It is quite amusing you are unable to see that you are being hypocritical.
You don't have any proof or sound reasoning that they are out of context. They are very good proxies for activity and popularity. Even if they aren't perfect, this is infinitely more proof than you are offering for your claims. Then there is also the simple fact that you can dig out archive.org links for major forums such as this one and see it twice as populated 5 years ago.
Proof?
These are just the same wild claims you are accusing me of... except I never claimed to know the exact reason why reddit is so successful in taking users that would have gone to forums in the past.
Why can people not find "similar interests" with google and xenforo?
And tell me, why can this not be true of Xenforo? If Xenforo doesn't want to turn their software into a "social network", I'm completely fine with that. But they need to do something drastic.
Anyways this thread is a waste of my time. I've done my part in trying to warn people here, but it seems like some people want to either bury their head in the sand or accept their fate in picking up reddit's leftovers.
Code:
Reddit has:
- subreddits
- separate subreddit modration
- moderation bots/tools
- subscriptions
- subscription feed
- multireddit subscription feed to combine feeds
- activity feed
- filters for best, hot, new rising, controversial, gilded
- global search of all reddits and posts across all reddits
- karma (reputation)
- up and down vote
- reddit premium
- reddit awards
- reddit coins required to give awards
- flair
- flair can be subreddit specific
- threaded comments
These are the majority of features that Reddit has that I can remember off the top of my head, or ones I have seen actively mentioned here or on other sites... Most of these can be done or have been done, and the ones that haven't are because they do not fit the core focus of XenForo... Nor should they, as the scalability required for them aren't something normal administrators can deal with.
As far as "good proxies for popularity and activity" you used a Google Trends search that does not account for actual metrics other than search. The first public metric I know of (2012) is also the same date that forums and Reddit were fairly equal in terms of popularity... At that point Reddit had 46M+ users, and has grown to 212M+ users since. Your metrics did not ever matter in the context you presented them because they cannot relay the actual popularity or activity of one platform, and only the search history of one generic word, and one specific word. If you cannot get your head around that, that is on you. Most arguments and numbers you have thrown out either lacked context, or were not relevant to what you were trying to get them to support.
Yes, I've totally said why it is successful. Outside of stating the MAU, stating that it is an infinite number of communities with an infinite number of topics and subjects, I have not really said much more as to why it is popular. I do not have usage data on what features are used, how often they are used, and any I did have would be anecdotal... I would rather stick with relevant facts and logic than try to skew a narrative.
Again, this is why I call you dense. Clearly people can search for any subject for a forum, but if Reddit offers multiple subreddits with multiple topics relevant to your search, they are likely going to go with the place that is offering more. I did 10 searches with various subjects (including things like art/computers/programming) and Reddit came up within the top 5-7 results with various subreddits and topics, and the rest were big boards, big platforms (DeviantArt, Art Station, StackExchange etc) or information sites. One site requires signing up once, others require signing up to multiple sites... Wonder which someone would choose.
Innovation does not need to be drastic, changes do not need to be drastic. XF1 to XF1.2 was a huge change, XF1.2 to XF1.4 was a huge change, XF1.4 to XF2 was a huge change so on and so forth... The issue is that each of those changes takes a ton of time and a ton of effort and research. You do not simply pull new features out of your ass, you do not simply pull new user experiences out of your ass, and you do not innovative from nothing.
You're right about it being a waste of time... You were the one that made it!