Forums Need more Users!

[Cosmic]

You've missed the WHOLE point of my post. So here, let me reiterate.

You can make forums simpler, but the same people will join, and the same people will post the same thing. And then there will be much confusion, and boredom, and it won't be worth anyones time.

There will be some of that, but I think we can agree to disagree here. I, for one, think forums are worth saving, as I don't find social media any more interesting.

 

[mikeydt2606]

got to agree about the decline in using forums since the social giants muscled in.

I created a forum 1 and half years ago it it died so passed it to another user to see if he could do anything but so far no joy.

I then created another and yep same thing no one hardly registering, just now got to the point of moving on and am in the process of creating a website.

I have visited some other forums and they too are dead which is a real shame.

I do however fully believe that one day people will move on from the social giants as they too will of run the course but question is what else is there out there for people to use.

just wondering if android and other devices are the way to go when creating some kind of forum, my new website has a setting for mobile devices which is a godsend and will help no ends.

mike

 

[Izaya]

I think it really depends on your niche. For General discussion forums, yeah Social Networking is going to kick your butt.

However for specific niches...Fansites, Literature/Writing, Creativity, Cooking, Sports related, RPG, etc etc social networking isn't going to top that anytime soon.

So it's less that forums are in decline and more like certain niches are in decline....

It has less to do with the number of clicks or whatever.....It's about offering something social networking generally can't.

 

[666]

Twitter is so different from Forums though.

 

[Chris K]

I believe Social Media, Phones and Tablets have pushed people from online forums. I don't think Social Media will take over forums completely because of what forums can offer vs what social media offers. The only purpose social media serves for me is advertising and my personal life with friends and family. That is it.


I think the real culprit is not having multi platform forums. You need a design that will work for Phones and Tablets. I've found a few (Very limited) mobile/tablet vB themes.

 

[ForumsGroup]

I'm not talking about this forum, or another specific forum. I'm talking about the forum community as a whole.

The number of people who use forums appears to be declining. We, the forum admins, need to find some way to get more people interested in using forums in general. Is there anything we can do to do that?

Facebook is a competitor for all of us. So is twitter. We need to steal their customers away, so that people will use forums instead. 😀

Forums need to integrate more with social media like vBulletin has done with the Facebook forum add-on. Just my opinion.

 

[MajesticSquid]

Forums do provide a few different aspects than social networking sites do. Sites like Facebook and Twitter aims to try as get users to interact with one another and many are addicted to the flash games they have available to all users.

However, a forum on the other hand, is there to have a place to discuss the specific genre and have a general conversation rather than just get users to talk amongst themselves and play games.

So in a way, both of these types of sites have there differences yet they do share some similarities.!