Have forums really got less popular...

Or have they just not got popular enough considering how many more people use the internet nowadays?

You have to admit, this is a pretty good question to think about, especially when you realise that about ten or so years ago, most forums were just far smaller and less active in general. Sure they felt bigger, because the internet felt like a smaller place those years ago and everyone who was into the community side of things was active on forums rather than Twitter or Facebook, but look at the stats for a minute.

Here's an examples set of forum stats from 2002 from a forum about the Zelda series (when it was actually more popular). At the site, the site was seen as a leader in its field.

Members: 173
Posts: 13,114
Most online: 14

By the time it closed in December 2004, the site had:

Members: 1,545
Posts: 56,367
Most online: 92

But hey, that's just one data point. Let's compare it to a site in the same niche that's now seen as the leader in said niche (Zelda Universe). In 2003, the forum stats were:

Members: 3538
Posts: 86,710
Most online: 32

It then reached 500 000 posts by about 2004 and has about 4 million posts in 2013.

But even for other fandoms it was similar. Here are some old stats for Serebii.net from 2004 (the current biggest Pokemon fan site/forum in existance):

Members: 2,727
Posts: 83,764
Most online: 233

And compared to now:

Members: 246,884
Posts: 12,123,488
Most online: 2168

And in the same niche, even affiliation requirements were much lower back in the early 2000s simply due to lower traffic in general. When the first site was new in 2002, the minimum unique visitor count was about 500 a day, then went to about 750 a day by 2004. Similarly, when Zelda Universe was new, minimum visitor count for affiliation was about 300 unique visitors a day, which had gone up to about the same 700+ a day by 2004 or 2005.

But let's see a more general forum for a good comparison. Here's the stats for Sitepoint in 2002:

Members: 17,134
Posts: 535,508
Most active: 244

It's not small by any means, but compared to a lot of modern webmaster forums, that's not exactly enormous either, especially given how the average amount of people online then was maybe 40 at best.

By 2004, this was:

Members: 50,446
Posts: 1,390,471
Most online: 2283

and now:

Members: 519,762
Posts: 4,554,099
Most online: 5,657

I'd say in general, forums have been getting more active. Not all of them, big boards have a tendency to stagnate and die off when the admins give up on them and just use them as a way to make money, but I'd say the general level of activity a site or forum can expect now is much higher than it was during the early years where forums were seen as the best thing ever. After all, back at one point a thousand unique visitors a day meant you owned the biggest site in the niche and a few hundred was seen as being extremely active. And a big board with over 500 000 posts? Was basically non existant.

So no, I wouldn't say forums are less active now, or even getting less popular. It's just that people's expectations of a large community seem to have changed a lot. Now a site with a few hundred thousand posts or even a big board is seen as tiny compared to the likes of Facebook, and every forum around can seemingly get well over a hundred members pretty quickly. Forums have actually got a lot more popular, it's just they haven't got popular enough to compete with the likes of Facebook or Twitter directly, and the existance of these social networks makes them look inactive by comparison.

Also, I'd say another interesting change has happened, in that paid forum software has become a lot more mainstream than it once was. Back in the early thousands it seems like free software was basically the expected platform for about ninety percent of forums and similar sites, with maybe the top ten percent most active ones using a paid script like vBulletin or UBB. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people saw owners/users of these scripts as rich, practically speaking.

But now it seems like vBulletin, Invision Power Board and XenForo have become a lot more mainstream, to the point a lot more forums are running them than they ever used to and smaller forums are actually starting out with them.

Am I right here? Are forums truly more active now and the nostalgia for the past was because we didn't have Facebook or Twitter or other social networks to compare our forums activity to? And are paid forum scripts a lot more common now than they ever were about ten years ago?

 

H, my newest client has his board for a month and IMO the stats are really great:

threads 968
posts 8,043
users 481
(without any team fake accounts to get new posts )

i don't think they're ding and IMO they'll never die if they're not only stupid chitchat boards, which will definitely be replaced with facebook and messengers.

 

Not to mention in the gaming industry a lot of people play the game and move on from the subject. It happens a lot.

 

There's a huge difference between members and active members. It's impossible to tell much of anything from those numbers without context. How many of them posted within the 30 days preceding the statistics? Forums overall have absolutely become less popular. They have been replaced, for many people, with the likes of facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest. Why come to my sports forum when you can tweet back and forth with your favorite sports stars?

 

Obviously less of the old ones posted within 30 days, because there were less people there in general. And there were certainly less daily posts about ten years ago.

I'd say a lot of the Facebook and Twitter users are not the same people who'd join forums. I know, many people who I know offline use social networks, but didn't use forums beforehand.

 

Why do most forum owners always base their success on members joined since first opened?

The real metric you should judge a forums on, is how many users does it average logged-in posting messages. How many members a forum has is pretty much irrelevant.

 

Okay then, the examples i used had about 20-30 members online at once in 2002-2004 and about 2 or 3 hundred members online in 2013 if they were still open. That better?

 

I don't even do that. I track my monthly activity and daily logged in users to see where we're growing and we're were not growing. It helps to keep track of your stats so you can perform better. I have 160-180 people that log in daily. It the summer time those numbers are a lot higher. We also do 200-400 daily posts since our contest started and have almost done 10k posts in one month.

I also think that some forums are on the decline where others are rising. It's all about the owner's vision and where they want to take their community. Myself personally, I'd rather seem my community continue to rise and not go on the decline. I think it's easier for me because I don't have any competitors like I did back in the beginning of 2011.

 

After social networking sites became popular, especially when Facebook and Twitter got to lead the charts, the whole internet changed. Many people that used to be on forums moved over to social networks. I think forums have a whole lot more to offer than Facebook or Tumblr do, but many of us have been successfully brainwashed to be checking what our "friends" are doing instead of reading posts and articles in forums or blogs.

 

Forums aren't going anywhere, they are a great place to let people interested in your topic talk with each other and I find the answers to a LOT of questions I have online in forums.

Google doesn't seem to like forums as much as blogs or sites because of the spam issues that go with them, along with the extra links, and a lot of forum threads are duplicate of other threads, or triplicate etc.

I love forums, I'll keep them alive all by myself if I have to

 

This is true, but it also drives more people back to forums especially if a forum owner is advertising on these networks. Tumblr users love to use gifs, so if your forum allows this, you may attract their users as well. I love using gifs in my post sometimes because it adds more substance to the post at hand and some people may find the gif usage to be funny. So it encourages them to read and respond to the post at hand. Also, facebook seems to full of drama from my friends talking about girlfriend/boyfriend issues, so if you talk about that on your forum too, you may attract more users who are looking for a place to vent and talk about their issues.

I actually see forums rising as more content gets crawled and listed on search engines. Forums are the birth of all these social networking sites and they deserve the most credit for driving these social networking sites. Because, if I remember correctly, a lot of social networking sites were promoted on online communities. Thus, people drove more users to these networks via forums. So forums sticking around throughout these networks growing aren't really an issue.

The issues we should take notice is how many forums have actually declined and gone dead because their owner stopped focusing on adding content and just watching their forums grow without a leader being present.

 

Even if forums are losing popularity, they'll still be popular enough that many people will still comment on them.

 

If you asked me if Forums are getting less popular, I have a resounding "No." for an answer.

In fact, a lot of niche-traffic gaming forums are growing stronger every year, and I have recent examples to show.

Black Ops 2 Forum: Threads: 12,809, Posts: 146,356, Members: 11,454
This is over the duration of November 2011 to now - the site recently broke the 12k mark.
This was sold to a new owner recently.

Borderlands 2 Forum: Threads: 3,373, Posts: 17,458, Members: 5,479 (THIS is a perfect example of a high post(s)-to-members ratio.)
This is also a November 2011 site.

2nd largest COD site: Threads: 77,051, Posts: 973,544, Members: 44,180
This was built in April 2010, and went on to become one of the most popular Black Ops Forum on the internet, got sold to a new owner 2 times before a perfect owner took helm of it with the intention of long-term growth. It's now COD247.

#1 largest COD site: Threads: 389,799, Posts: 1,138,536, Members: 123,988
This was bult during the peak of COD4. Became one of the fastest growing COD4 Boards on the internet. This was sold to a corporation. Its now TheCODForums. Not to be confused with my CODForums

 

It is NOT easy to set up a successful forum and we all know that. Most people are more inclined to be on Facebook and hit 'like' than be bothered to read/write on a site. So we're actually dealing with a serious change in our potential members' behaviour.

 

The issue is... would these people have been forum members to begin with or would they have used some other service like maybe Myspace or MSN messenger or whatever else, or just not used the web for discussion?

Because that line of reasoning reminds me of people complaining about 'piracy' and thinking that every 'stolen' copy is a lost sale. But would all of the thieves have bought it had it not been available illegally elsewhere? No, many of them only stole it because it was 'free'.

It's also like saying that all those 'casual' gamers who play video games on Facebook and their mobile phones would have been console players in the past rather than either non gamers altogether or people who stuck to 'simple' games like those built into Windows, flash games, etc.

Just something to consider.

 

Yeah, but a lot of people make it sound like forums are dying because we're seeing this "serious change" in potential members' behavior. We're just seeing more, and more lazy types of users. The fact that they want to be on Facebook and hit "like" frequently means they want to express their opinions on the largest possible stage. That stage is currently on Facebook. However, what they don't realize, is that forums are a better platform if you want to sound smart, educated, and with some great ideas.

Not even the issue. These people have been a part of a message board, or forum at one point or the other in their lives. Like I said and inferred... Facebook is that "Grandest stage of them all" when it comes to having a platform to speak your mind, as half of these people are too lazy to actually say something, become the "next big person" or "famous person." Its the same stupid reason why MySpace was that "go to" place for social networking. We used to be able to express our favorite colors, our favorite games, hobbies, movies, and whatnot with myspace's profiles (with HTML). It was that reason that broke everyone apart on that platform, because one person wanted to hack the other. And we're talking about the teenage demographic here.

Actually, yes. They would. In fact, much of the 'facebook games' formula are derived from both traditional video games, and flash games. My cousin used to play Nintendo games like a die-hard gamer, just like me. He left video games because things got more complicated. He now spends his leisure time playing games on his iphone. In another example, my uncle and aunt owns a Wii, but only plays it recreationally - as in, casually. 50% of the time, it's because family is here to play. We play along, like a family. However, they both play games on either android-based phones, or tablets....

Worst part is? All of them dabbled in flash games on their internet browsers at one point in their life. Not every day, like those mobile or tablet games. Those cellphone games, and tablet games are pretty much coded JUST like a flash game. In fact, they require flash to play those games - internet, facebook, mobile games. All the same. They don't even realize it.