"Forums are dying"..

[Cosmic]

I wonder: are forums now competing with sites like Facebook, or likes like Reddit and Tumblr? Most people who use Facebook, I don't think, have ever really used forums before. The people who forums need to appeal to are people who are at least a little bit invested in technology, the internet, extra. I think a lot of those people either use forums or sites like Reddit.

 

[Deleted member 8254]

I think forums are not dying, but youngsters are deviated from using it. New internet users visit Social networking sites and don't come to know about forums.

 

[Captured Enigma]

I don't know if they are dying, I think there are not so many people who think about them on a day to day basis. This goes for a lot fo things though, how many people think about lighthouses every day? The people who work full time on that lighthouse will, the ships pilots that have to look out for the daily will and the people who enjoy looking at lighthouses will. It is essentially the same concept here, a lot of people on the street won't be thinking about forums every day, only the people who make money from them, need to visit them or are interested in them will think about them daily.

 

[Migi]

I wonder: are forums now competing with sites like Facebook, or likes like Reddit and Tumblr? Most people who use Facebook, I don't think, have ever really used forums before. The people who forums need to appeal to are people who are at least a little bit invested in technology, the internet, extra. I think a lot of those people either use forums or sites like Reddit.

I don't use any of those, but closest to forum form is probably Reddit. I feel that this kind of website is the main competitor. Tumblr seems more like micro-blogging with its system, so it's more limited. Facebook and Twitter are part of this group too. That being said, it's probably going to be more effective to advertise at Reddit-like websites since it's more probable to find people who are interested in forum-like platforms, unlike social media users.

 

[MasterA]

I think the problem is that everything has been discussed to death. If you do a quick google search for a specific problem, then most likely you have pages and pages of results that are probably mostly the same. Therefore there is less of a need for people to request help or discuss things on forums. However, there is still some hope for promotion forums because even when everything has been discussed, people still need to promote their sites. However the discussion aspect of promotion forums has gone downhill.

 

[CM30]

Forums aren't really dying. Less popular? Depends what you mean. Most of the social network users probably weren't heavy forum users, with maybe the exception of those on Reddit.

But even then... for many communities, the forums are actually more active than the social networks and subreddits and what not for the topic.