[NickyDee]

Whats happened;

1.) Facebook and twitter has captured a lot of the micro-blogging (status update/tweets etc.) market and grown it in a different direction. Forums remain strong but more so in niche areas and are probably going through a bit of an identity crisis. Certainly in my opinion vB4 isn't quite sure right now whether its a forum, a blog, a cms, a profile/microblog, a social network or a mobile app. Because these were all internet trends at various times and vbulletin incorporated them (usually about a year down the line). But the end result works in a way that doesn't always unify each of them very well. It's a problem for all forum software not just vB.

2.) Web users have over the past 10 years slowly transitioned away from enthusiasts towards casual consumers and continue to do so. Not every casual consumer wants to spend hours participating in a forum helping to build up its content. If the content isn't already there they F-off somewhere else till they find what they want. This makes getting a forum off the ground quite a challenging enviornment these days. Gone are the days of "make the site and they will come".

3.) Some coders who used to work on websites and plugins have since transitioned to more profitable and/or developing areas like apps. vBulletin is a complex platform that doesn't immiediately make sense even to seasoned coders and the loss of some of the experienced hands has made the transition harder than it might otherwise have been.

4.) As vbulletin has grown and branched out lots of people have used it in different ways. It puts jelsoft in a position where moving forward in a decisive direction is very hard, because its bound to upset someones vision of what a forum should be.