People only have so much time to be "online" and more and more of that time is moving toward Facebook, Twitter, all the other social networks, apps, popular games like Farmville and Candy Crush Saga, online gaming, etc... They are the "new" internet... 3.0 if you will... Forums were 2.0. You can have successful forums but they are harder to grow and maintain than 10 years ago, it will never be the way it used to be again.

I just think forums have to keep changing and adapting! Overall, I believe forums that have a strong and vibrant community (in itself) definitely will survive and thrive.

For gaming forums, the ones with active clans (a great example) will definitely survive longer verse a gaming forum that doesnt offer much for its users.

It's true, trends have changed with what people want to use on web now.

Don't think that makes any difference, it's already happened with forum software adding social networking features to try and catch up and compete. But a person running a forum just can't match what the likes of facebook offers people for using.

On the contrary, I believe users are king. Dedicated members are like fine tequila. I find many forums are crammed with content and information covering their niche but lack organized knowledge, an updated platform to display their content properly and usually a dedicated group of members to increase its value.

But to your point there's plenty of blame to go around. Start with a poorly developed platform. Move on the media companies monopolizing the various forum channels then letting their forum properties run on autopilot.

Follow that up with admins and companies whoring up domains then creating forums that they have zero interest in and tweaking the forum for no other purpose than Google rankings and Adsense cash.

Many niches are doing well depending on how active the dedicated admins are. For instance Automotive, Gaming, Photography, Howto, Outdoors, YouTube and a few others are usually doing well.

But at a minimum to do well you have to fine tune your marketing skills, become a dedicated all-involved admin and nurture those forum relationships.

Social media's the bane of the internet, the way I see it. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to utilise it if we want to promote our products or forums en masse. I call Facebook the Lazy Nation. People can't be arsed doing anything other than clicking "Like", posting short comments or posts (Twitter is the worst offender for this) and it's changed the internet for the worse. Small talk online has been on the rise for years now, and posting pictures of skeletons insinuating oral sex will get more attention than anything remotely intelligent.

Yes, forums are dead. And whatever's left of your dwindling communities will be eaten up by Reddit.

There's a way to fight back, but don't expect Vbulletin or any company stuck in a late 90's vision of the internet to lead the charge.

You don't get users without content. Cart before the horse.

In itself, the forums aren't passed away. Probably is died a communication model, based on single-issue forums and the rest crumbs.

I'll agree with @Max Taxable. And not only content but if possible unique content. The question is where to find that magic unique content as there are 100's of similar topic forums.

Another problem is not the Facebook itself but the way that Facebook "teached" the users to work. Somehow it made users actind like robots. Just clicking likes. And this is the reality. I've some friends who really wanted to help me adding content in one of my forums. What happen? They were unable even to understand how to make a post, much more how to quote a post etc etc.

So you need to "fight" with 2 things:

1. Finding unique content
2. Finding users willing to spend sometime to learn how forums are different that Facebook

Forums aren't dead in my world. I have a forum where we get over 100 active members posting a day. We also average around 1500-1800 post a day.