A friend of mine in Social Media was checking out a site with me the other day and discovered the site had a forum. “Wow! A Forum!” he exclaimed, “That’s so 1999.” His comment made me realize that some people share his same mentality but yet, totally miss the point.
In my dealings in Social Media, and in the internet in general, I’ve noticed that forums still play a huge part in the realm we know as the internet. A ton of internet memes have started in forums and continue to be to this day. So why do people have the idea that a forum is “So 1999?”
Everyone is getting lost in other forms of communication on the internet. Not that using these new methods is the wrong thing to do at all, it’s not. I do feel people should take a step back and look at the big picture. Forums and boards have been around for a long time yes, but they still play a huge part in content delivery; some of that content delivery kept us “In the know” during the Iran protests. Secret forums were set up by the group we all know as Anonymous during the Iran protests. These forums hosted Iranian Government Proxy information so protesters on the ground could Tweet, Stream, upload, and blog in real time about what was happening there. During that time we all saw the carnage, the resolve, and the martyrs of the Iran protests, thanks to a forum.
One really cool forum I came across this week is MyBlogGuest, a community of guest bloggers. Now, I have to say, I was kicking myself for not thinking of this first. I ran across this site as a result of a Twitter Stream from Ann Smarty. To me this seemed like a really good use for a forum, so I joined up and noticed a lot of high-end blogs are signing up.
So if forums are so 1999, it seems 1999 put out a really good tool that year, a tool that in my view, we will keep using.
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Not only are forums no longer required with sites becoming either communities or complete digital interaction interfaces, but at the rate people are inboxing each other on facebook and myspace.. are the days of email not numbered as well?
I agree, people still participate in forum discussion and forum is still one of the most information reach media to search through for valuable knowledge.
Forums are great to connect with a bunch of people in an organised structure (forum posts) to talk about related things int he niche/area they’re interested in
People may say the likes of twitter etc are making forums less useful but those tools aren’t as niche specific and you don’t get the quality group discussion like you do on a forum on twitter etc.
So no, I don’t think forums are dead. I still visit a forum on Australian Rules Football (bigfooty.com) that I’ve been a member since 2001. It would really be a strange place without that forum.
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We strongly believe that forums can be awesome, relevant, and even web 2.0 – Check out VanillaForums.com 🙂
In Germany Google often ranks forums above everything else. Sometimes even outdated forum threads from 2002 rank above current info.
This way Google prompted a comeback for forums in German.
Personally, I use only one forum that is the biggest in my niche.I get a lot of useful information and have the possibility to ask people for assistance and can help others as well.It is all about sharing after all.So, I think forums have a bright future.