[HM666]

Originally Posted by socialteenz

From my clients forum, this is my understanding on how forums die/evolve.

Initially people open new forums for the hype of being an admin, if it goes well and if at all they make any income they continue to maintain their forum. I've seen people running forums even for a very close user group, just for the joy of maintaining a forum. If the activity of their forum drops down or if they lose interest they shut down their site.

Only focused people know what they are doing and still continue to maintain their forums & overcome the obstacles of social networks in a very smart way.

BINGO! That is pretty much exactly what happens with a lot people who start one. Then you have the ones who start it because "it looks easy enough" and then when they get into it and realize the costs, time & work that goes into quickly lose interest and the forum dies a painful quick death.

Originally Posted by cellarius

This hardly is very telling. There always has been a rather high fluctuation on forums, and only a rather small percentage actually made (and make) it over the first, say, five years, or develop a large user base.

Very true indeed. And to actually accurately find out what the stats are there would need to be some sort of development involved, but I know/realize that Christos was just giving examples and I do not think what he posted he meant was set in stone per se.