On Monday, I posted my thoughts on why online forums aren't dead yet. There were some great comments, both on the blog post and outside the blog post; however, I felt compelled to get opinions from some more folks.
So, I went to LinkedIn and posted this question:
Do you still use online forums?
Online forums can be regarded as web 1.0's version of social networking. They still continue to thrive today, but for how long? How do you use online forums, and how valuable do you think they are compared to newer forms of social media and networking? Do you think they'll continue to grow and evolve, or die away like dinosaurs?
And I received some excellent answers, from which I culled these 7 reasons why online forums continue to thrive:
- They're great for industry-specific or niche topics. One opinion was that social networks are still too "generalist".
- Online forums make great user support platforms. One person commented that "unless people stop using the web to solve problems, there will always be a need for forums."
- They're not as promotional. Online forum users generally use them to ask and answer questions, rather to promote their own agendas. Although...
- They're great for linkbuilding. Many marketers still use online forums to build links to their content in a (somewhat) non-promotional, unobtrusive way (through signatures, referring to helpful, relevant content on their sites).
- Message boards and online forums are still the interactive, social community centerpieces on many sites (here's a great example: CoffeeGeek Forums)
- What's better for the creation user-generated, index-able content?
- Forum software is being updated to include more web 2.0 features. For instance, vBulletin has created a blogging add-on for community members to create their own blogs. Vanilla is completely open-source, allowing developers to create their own add-ons.
Yes, there are disadvantages - such as the tendency for many forum discussions to turn ugly (of course, I've seen the same thing happen on social networking sites), and having to log in to post (as opposed to just laying down a comment in a blog). I still think that the pros completely outweight the cons - online forums are not going away anytime soon.
