Article - the death of forums

[dan_pdx]

https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/27/...ums-dying-off/

The article exactly mirrors my experience: I've been hanging out on a niche snowboard forum for 20 years and the people there are all of a certain age - there are no young users coming in. All that activity has moved to Facebook and maybe Reddit to a certain extent. I'm not a Facebook guy because I'm from the generation (probably like many of you) where you didn't even want to put your picture online associated with your full name, let alone get data mined for everything you do online and everyone you know. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is working on a social network that is supposed to be the anti-facebook (supported by users, not ads, if I remember correctly), but I'm not so sure he's going to get traction, so there's no good path forward in my mind: it's either submit to the borg and join Facebook, or just watch once-vital communities slowly dwindle.

At any rate, I'm glad that all you ornery dentists are still keeping it real here.

[splat]

Shit.....we were way ahead of the curve back in 2000 and now we're dinosaurs.

[iceman]

<<crickets>>

[AK47bp]

.

Back to real life I guess.


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[skaredshtles]

"young users" activity has moved to Facebook? Funny.

Facebook/Twitter: really old people
Instagram: old people
Snapchat: young-ish people
Tik Tok/<Unknown>: young people

[dan_pdx]

"young users" activity has moved to Facebook? Funny.
Old-fashioned forums: dinosaurs
Facebook/Twitter: really old people
Instagram: old people
Snapchat: young-ish people
Tik Tok/<Unknown>: young people

FIFY

[Ted Striker]

"young users" activity has moved to Facebook? Funny.

Yeah, younger people left facebook when mom - and grandma - started e-stalking them.

[Ted Striker]

So I just read the article. It was written by Greg, right?

[skaredshtles]

FIFY

Can't argue with that.

[irul&ublo]

I blame Rob Story

[Garbowski]

The "Do a search!" people were right, everything has been discussed already.

[Ted Striker]

The "Do a search!" people were right, everything has been discussed already.

There's already a thread on that.

[iceman]

Fortunately the search function blows here.

[ex-powderbroker]

we're on page 100 of the ecrc right now, five years ago we would have blown by that in january on a lean year.

[Mazderati]

The same cohort progressed from topic-driven liststervs to newsgroups to Yahoo groups to forums. There are so many options for online interaction now and the interaction part is valued more than the topic part.

[dan_pdx]

The same cohort progressed from topic-driven liststervs to newsgroups to Yahoo groups to forums. There are so many options for online interaction now and the interaction part is valued more than the topic part.

I agree with that, but I feel like many of them don't really support substantial conversation. I mean, yes, there are unlimited places to share funny cat videos, but if you want a discussion about something somewhat technical like binding angles or tips for applying Waterlox over mineral oil, where do you go for that if not a forum or possibly Facebook/Reddit?

[S_jenks]

As one of the younger users to this forum, I can say that there is a lot of people in my age group who are completely sick of all social media (mid-20 to mid 30-crowd).

For me, I've ditched almost all the garbage and now almost purely use the TGR forums for my 'social media' fix. I rarely post to insta these days, and I probably use my flickr account more than that.

So it's not all doom and gloom. I think some forums have a chance to go on for a long time.

[frorider]

seems like my 30-35 yr old friends are still all about the Stories on IG. Which was IG’s attempt to stop everyone from going on Snapchat.

Definitely reflects a desire to not post things that are up forever.

[PNWbrit]

we're on page 100 of the ecrc right now, five years ago we would have blown by that in january on a lean year.

Apparently no one cares.

[Mazderati]

I agree with that, but I feel like many of them don't really support substantial conversation. I mean, yes, there are unlimited places to share funny cat videos, but if you want a discussion about something somewhat technical like binding angles or tips for applying Waterlox over mineral oil, where do you go for that if not a forum or possibly Facebook/Reddit?

Generally agree. Newer social media is a lot of sound bites and reactions and forums are still the place I most often end up when looking for specific information. 20+ years of discussion on some forums is a lot of history.

[Mazderati]

Have you guys seen this?

[Ted Striker]

I disagree with the author's premise. The Foo Fighters fandom forum might be dead - and so it should be - but car forums are alive and well. Same goes for bikes, boats, woodworking, guitars, gaming, coding, etc. The rise of trump showed that 4chan is somehow still a thing.

His point that reddit took a lot of the traffic from the single subject forums is true, but it's still a forum. One that still gets 1.5 billion hits per month.

[nickwm21]

The Reddit content on r/skiing and r/mtb is typically pretty terrible.


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[funkendrenchman]

I can't tell you the number of times I add the word "forum" to a google search, so that I get actual discussion about topics. Where else can I find that? Definitely not Instagram, FB, Twitter, or god-forbid TikTok.

I don't think we've yet seen the big successor to forums.

[The AD]

It's interesting because I haven't seen any new technology that is better at doing what forums are intended to do. Things like Instagram and Twitter are just inherently different. Facebook Groups are similar, but there's nothing they provide that's better than forums. Maybe it's just a further move away from actual discourse into quick soundbites? From my perspective that seems to be what younger people are interested in.