Average Lifespan of a Forum

Is there such a thing? Is there a certain amount of time most forums last before they roll over and die? Either from lack of activity or lack of time/money/interest on the owner's part?

Seems to me that a lot of forums (including successful and active ones) close down after about 3 or 4 years.

 

We would never close our teen forums, we intend to keep it till were old and pass it onto our son

A lot of forums do die down and go unmaintained but I visit a lot of forums that are around 10 years old, I hope for ours to be alive and kicking when were gone

 

To be honest, I think it really depends on the niche - that said, I don't think that there's an "average" lifespan (or, I haven't noticed a pattern).

 

If it's an average I think it would be alot less than 3-4 years. Though those kind of stats would be impossible to calculate without the appropriate data at hand.

I find that alot of people like to start a site and make it look pretty, adding in the forums only to leave it to die an early death because they are sitting around waiting for people to register when no content is available to entice anyone to register.

 

Has anyone collected statistics on this or is this just based on your observations?

 

I have seen a lot of people start a forum thinking it is easy and then later found out building a strong and good community is tough work with a lot of hours put in and sleepless nights at times. A lot of new administrators/owners dont see this before beginning and a lot give up early.

 

The average lifespan is less then one year. From the numbers I have seen, something like 85% of all forums will close before they are 1 year old. Some reports show as high as 95% will close. But the 95% seems a little high to me. I personally think the number would be more like 75% or mor will close before 1 year.

 

Where could I find this type of information?


I think once there is momentum and continued interest by the staff it should last in perpetuity unless there is a major policy change or the focus of the site is no longer relevant.

There also could be other sites started that may divert traffic.

 

I'm willing to bet the vast majority of those free forums fail. Little investment, low expectations, ugly ugly ugly makes for a forum few would want to join.

 

Adding on to this...

When an individual decides to create a discussion community by way of a free forum hosting service, his/her expectations (to begin with) are probably not that high - you can only do so much on a freely hosted community. With limited resources and notoriously horrible reliability, building and managing a successful discussion forum when using such a service is unlikely (but not impossible).

 

A lot of forums unfortunately die before they've barely started...so much competition out there forum wise, you really have to be unique to stand out.

 

I read it a few months ago on a site that analyzed traffic, blogs, forums and trends. But I did not save the address where I saw it. So at this time I am not able to give you the reference. I did some google searches this morning but was not able to come up with anything. But I will keep looking.

 

It wasn't Jacob Nielsen, by any chance? I don't know of any articles he's written about forum failure rates, but he has written about the phenomenon of the top 1% of posters providing 95% of the content. (Note: that statistic is from memory, it's quite possible I'm mistaken.)

 

I do not recognize that name. I probably found a link to the site on digitalpoint, or v7n, or some other webmaster, blogger site. But I will keep looking around to see what I can find.

I can tell you this for sure. Last week I was looking through the links directory at VBulletin.com for gaming forums, and a lot of the links I clicked on where dead. Either the page could not be found, or the site was parked. And those are people that paid for a VB license and then either closed their site, let their hosting account expire or let the domain name expire,,,, or something else.

 

Thanks. If you do find it that would be good information.

 

I think there are a few stages in a forum's life cycle.

Once a forum makes it past it's infancy, the key is never to become satisfied. Keep recruiting new members, keep active as an administrator, keep you content up to date with your niche.

I believe that ultimately forums die because of owner apathy. They get it set up but then don't actively recruit, they get a few core members and rely on them, they get larger then drop out of the activity them selves. And the one that gets me the most is how in the world as a forum do you not keep up to date in the happenings of your niche. Once that happens people see through you and then start disappearing.

 

This is a very nice discussion we've got going on.

Do you guys think a forum will naturally "die" after so many years of going strong, even if the owner continues to give it his/her all? It seems that the majority opinion is that owners eventually give up and is why the forum fails. But even if they keep it up will it eventually die out naturally, say, for having "run its course"?

 

I think it can continue as long as they make recruiting a priority and give good content. Even your best members will come and go but the forum can continue.

 

Right. I think that if you can make it passed the initial stages, you'll last for as long as you can continue to pay for the site. But a lot of people tend to give up shortly after creating their forum.