Is facebook killing forums?!

[tbworld]

Originally Posted by kartik786

we are nearing 2015 now and its evident.. forums are dying!

I previously wrote in this thread about my daughters board, it went from 800 users to 23,000 (this last year) with 1200 active users a day. She does not try to compete against Facebook, instead she embraces the diversity. All of her members use Facebook to chat (in fact they must for registration), they go to her board for real content and the closeness of the private community.

Look at the number of cell phone forums, and most of them are doing pretty well. They shouldn't be as they are quite boring in unique content, but the topic is hot and the need for shared information is great. So for the time being they are thriving ... until the death of the product cycle.

Facebook will be here, until it is not. Create your strategy around that fact. If you are trying to compete against Facebook, why? You are never going to convince users to drop Facebook and come to your board. At best they will do both, each with their own unique strengths.

I liked @BBNZowner comment above, it showed he has a unique strategy. If you are looking at forums as a business, you cannot just stamp-out more metal paper clips without have a unique strategy for distribution of your product and a method to capture market share, or you will just end up having a garage full of paper clips.

Forum software is just a tool, keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish.