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

been hearing this for years.
personally, i like being able to compartmentalise my social activities on the web. i reckon many others feel the same way, so i seriously doubt forums will die off.
 
Interesting article from the New York Times about the demise of message boards. Obviously the author has never been in a Xenforo forum.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/remembrance-of-message-boards-past/?ref=opinion

Is the end of online forums near? Is Facebook and Twitter about to kill us off?
Very little research was obviously done for the article, as she only looked as far as her own experiences and didn't do anything to reach out to forum developers (vB, IPB and XenForo are obviously not doing poorly, not to mention free boards).
 
I think there's a lot of truth in it, sad but true. It's the end of the road for them. How many forum owners here actually spend more time talking on Facebook or Twitter, than they do their own community. :whistle:

I think they are totally different.
Forums are more special content related than social platforms.

I've heard that same argument many times now to try and differentiate the two platforms and give forums there own area of use separate from social networking, but it doesn't hold much weight today, nor does it make much of a difference anymore.
 
The boards that die are those that don't embrace the future and stick to their old style mentalities.

My board has gone through 3 different forum softwares and soon to be a 4th (asp playground > vb 3 > vb 4 > xenforo) as it has been required to include new user demanded features.
 
I believe it's complete nonsense and has been posted before here and elsewhere. The funny thing is that obviously some people would like or prefer certain things to happen, and therefore write articles that they believe will work as a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have also seen Zuckerberg talking critically about email and yet it seems to be still here with no signs of dying off any time soon. The reality of the (evolving) internet is that it is anything but centralized, people tend to search for specific and specialized websites and communities because that's where the experts gather, not on the social network sites or similar large sites.

If anything, it's the general social network and larger trendy sites that will keep competing with each other, and die off if they do not renovate/adapt (My Space etc). Also we have seen the opposite of this claim on our forums and experienced increasingly more traffic since the social network sites started booming. Forums are here to stay for a very long time.
 
More and more people like to banter, engage in smalltalk and this is why (Imo anyway)social media has taken most people by the genitalia because it's right down they're alley. Remembering most people are your average joe blog who know next to nothing about the online world, the type of people that'll call around every 5 minutes wanting you to fix their system because they downloaded or visited some link with a virus. For folk like this to actually engage in a dialog that doesn't consist of a "lol" or "A/S/L" would only spiral into a state of trance if they were to actually run, build a forum. It's not in their abilities, expertise to even think about forums and this is where the social media area is right down their alley. It's hosted for them, they don't have to build pages, design or code anything just engage in banter and play the myriad of life killing games that the networks provide them.

If the day comes (and I doubt it will) that social media sites do kill forums off, then I'd think that would be a sad, discouraging day where laziness, the inability to communicate in an intellectual intelligent way. The www and it's inhabitants are certainly in trouble. Social media sites and for the people that heavily rely on them (which is most) are now embedded in ignorance where everything is done for them.

Do I think social media networks will kill off forums? Not whilst theres intelligent people willing to create and not be spoon fed by ignorance which so far the social networks are doing very well with the average (can you fix my computer i have a virus type person). *plants crops*
 
It depends IMHO on the target audience (and the type of service you offer).

I'm a very lucky forum owner of 1 forum, where 10% of the visitors is at facebook & 0% know what twitter is and another forum with ~20% at facebook + 50% at twitter (because they use if for company communication)

BUT i agree.
I know some chit chat/offtopic forums, where many long time users, don't come back anymore, because they prefer facebook.
 
I think the problem is a change in web trends with most people, they simply don't prefer to use forums for discussion now, that much is staring you right in the face. You cannot deny it unless your living under a rock on some remote desert island were King Kong resides.
 
Is Facebook and Twitter about to kill us off?
No, but they will eventually kill themselves off.

It's Internet History 101: something becomes popular and people flock to it, then just as quickly abandon it, at which point it becomes insignificant at best, or at worst, a historical footnote. People who believe that Facebook is too large to die just aren't looking at history. Or hundreds of years of human behavior (see: Stonehenge, the Facebook of its time).

Yes, I said it; Stonehenge!

Let's see the New York Times work Stonehenge into an Internet story. Amateurs.
 
Social media has dumbed everyone down. No one can think or have an intelligent conversation anymore. I don't care what you ate for breakfast, stop tweeting about it. That's why I unfollowed almost everyone. When everyone is a "celebrity" the word loses it's meaning. It's no wonder psychologists have lamented the rise of narcissism in our society. Your breakfast tweets are NOT IMPORTANT.
 
Social media has dumbed everyone down. No one can think or have an intelligent conversation anymore. I don't care what you ate for breakfast, stop tweeting about it. That's why I unfollowed almost everyone. When everyone is a "celebrity" the word loses it's meaning. It's no wonder psychologists have lamented the rise of narcissism in our society. Your breakfast tweets are NOT IMPORTANT.

Maybe not, but everyone IS doing it. By the way, I had Cornflakes with warm milk and plenty sugar today! ;)

Don't forget also, we've now got "Google Plus" to add to that forum destroying Twitter and Facebook social networking list.
 
No, but they will eventually kill themselves off.

It's Internet History 101: something becomes popular and people flock to it, then just as quickly abandon it, at which point it becomes insignificant at best, or at worst, a historical footnote. People who believe that Facebook is too large to die just aren't looking at history. Or hundreds of years of human behavior (see: Stonehenge, the Facebook of its time).

Yes, I said it; Stonehenge!

Let's see the New York Times work Stonehenge into an Internet story. Amateurs.
I agree with this. Having said that, Facebook has taken much better steps when compared to the likes of Myspace and the others. But still, I have friends who are already tired of it and have left without looking back. I've actually considered the same. Its just become less important to me compared to a couple of years ago.
 
Facebook - appear to have learned a lesson from the MySpace mistake. I never did use MySpace because way too many in-your-face adverts got displayed on members pages. A real turn-off and they went over-the-top with it all I thought to make money from the service, I even suspect it could have played a big part in the MySpace downfall.

But things do change and there will come a time when something else replaces even the mighty Facebook. Although, right now I think we are looking at least a few years down the line from now, but more importantly it won't be forum boards replacing it.

So it doesn't really matter if the Facebook/Twitter craze comes to an end, it will mean little for forums in general because they won't be the "New Thing" taking over we're they left off.
 
I think that Face book discussions will have a significant effect for the people 'trying to get a vague idea' about a company. For instance I was curious about Boostmobile prepaid cell phone service and I found this on facebook. It was enough information for me, and felt no need to dig through long threads on a mobile phone forum:

http://www.facebook.com/board.php?uid=7292863341&f=2

But for specialized forums I really don't think it will make a huge difference long term... and I really don't think that everyone that has a facebook page wants to manage a facebook discussion feature.
 
Maybe not, but everyone IS doing it. By the way, I had Cornflakes with warm milk and plenty sugar today! ;)

Don't forget also, we've now got "Google Plus" to add to that forum destroying Twitter and Facebook social networking list.
Hey! That is nice. I only had oatmeal. I though about raisins but none available :) Do you usually put sugar in your corn flakes? Does that
 
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