The END of Message Boards And Discussions Forums As We Know It?

[joX]

bbpress has been around for a long long time.
It's not that good.
Maybe the new version will be ? Seems unlikely.

Tried BBPress as well, more than once. My view, don't waste your time on it.

I have tinkered with it for more than a year myself and until they swithced bbpress to a plugin I hated it. My thoughts on it is that it offers a simple to set up and use forum solution in the most basic sense. It will not work for people looking for a feature rich platform, but if you have a WP site and have no money it will be a viable option.

My overall point about bbpress in context to this thread is that it will certainly increase the number of forums out there.

 

[Fred Sherman]

I wouldn't dismiss the article completely. The belief that old style message boards will go the way of the Dodo is probably accurate. The intent is changing. Social networking is the new method of communication. The challenge is for forums to adapt, integrate and harness social networking, rather than compete against it.

Its not unprecedented. 20 years ago, I had a thriving community of several hundred people - regulars that were daily contributors to the community. It was a Wildcat BBS. I also ran a Renegade BBS and a Major BBS. Users had to dial directly into the system via modem, so it was pretty much a local area thing.

You don't see those anymore. Technology made them obsolete. So, if you take the longer view, do I see forums around 20 years from now? No, not really. But I do think there will be something around that will allow individual to form some type of community.

So the bigger answer is I believe there will always be some type of mechanism to allow people to create communities of similar interests. Just as today's forums do share some elements of the BBS from which they evolved, then "next thing" will trace its roots to what we are doing today.