I think forum popularity has gone down with the popularity of Social Media websites. I know of members who were once very active on forums are now doing the same thing on their Facebook timeline. They get to directly post to their friends and get complete control of their own posts. Imo Social Media has democratized the concept of forums. In-spite of all the negative impacts on traditional forums, I still see all of this only being good for all of us. Just that we need to work harder to keep the forums going.