Is facebook killing forums?!

[Lionel]

If you integrate facebook, that could be an asset. I know someone who created a facebook page . He posts his selected threads in there simultaneously. That in turn gives him shares and more people get access to forums, then register and comment

[K4GAP]

Originally Posted by Lionel

If you integrate facebook, that could be an asset. I know someone who created a facebook page . He posts his selected threads in there simultaneously. That in turn gives him shares and more people get access to forums, then register and comment

You are of course referring to Facebook integration using the built in options in the admin cp?

I'm not a coder but I can't help but to believe there has to be a better way or, some enhancements to what the vb admin options shows.

I personally believe there is no doubt that Facebook has herded a large percent of web users but, a well designed forum with content that fills a niche of the public, can kick some serious butt.

I have concentrated for so long on the design of my site thinking it would attract users. After all the work I did to my site, I gave it all up and went with a purchased style.

I love my site even though I only have very few members and the ones I have aren't active. The Facebook group I have is growing every day.

[Lionel]

Yes. The built-in integration works fine. Just by sharing one of your articles makes it appears on your friends wall. If they want to see more they click on the link. This guy did a nice job http://riflecompetition.com/

[tbworld]

Hi Gary,

My daughter uses Facebook to bring her users to her small board, otherwise she would be in the same boat. She has only 800 users, a third are very active -- her school and her friends. Without the Facebook tie-in she would have almost none. It is much easier for her to add large content on her board so she likes that, yet it is clear that the young age group prefers the ease of Facebook with it's mobile features. Unfortunately, all of it looses out to plain ol' text messaging. I wrote an app to send SMS messages to and from her board, but it really has not caught on. As Facebook grows and features grow it might be a hard sell, but my daughter still has more fun with her board.

The large board I oversee is a corporate board, which the users are forced to use. We recently (over the last year) have added a social aspect to it where the users can now interact with social media as kind of an experiment to bring brand awareness of the company. Outside users cannot sign-up, but inside users can post external Facebook events to the company system and vice-versa. I am kind of curious what I will learn from this interaction. For some reason the employees think we are more progressive by having this kind of tie-in and it brings a little company pride -- don't ask me why.

In the business world mobile is everything, our employees use their mobile phone two to one over their desktops for posting messages. This is where I have concentrated our concern in our IT department. Internal employee interaction and communication is vital to the company.

It is clear that Facebook is a major player and you cannot ignore it when designing a site like yours. On the other-hand it does not do everything well, and to me not nearly as fun to play around with. In my opinion merge your site with social media, have great content on your board and the really active users will slowly come. I think Facebook is a great tool to feed your site, but it might take a while.

Not really. People makes forums to share specific information.

[TOMC28]

My forum activity has dropped dramatially over past 2 years. My users want IMMEDIATE and EASY ability to post. Its so extremely simple to take a picture/post immediately to Facebook.

I like the advice in this thread regarding posting poplular threads to my FaceBook page, and refer then back to the site for more info/postings. Makes sense, except its not a living site then, it will force me to engage daily on FB.

Since I am currently using 3.8.1, are there any upgrades within VB which allow functional integration---which this community truly likes? I'm hearing that the Bots/crawlers from FB are not friendly with our forums.

With any of the VB Versions / Mods, can I simply add an APP with my VB site to my users phones, so they can immediately take photo/post to my forum?

If I'm posting in the wrong area, please let me know

[napy8gen]

People not knowing forums anymore in my country. All is facebook. It conquered everything. As vbskins seller sales figure are very bad.

for forum to survive it has to have ajax ability like facebook, post in instance no need reply button just enter keyboard. No need quick reply box like forum has.

[BBNZowner]

What about when you offer a forum service which for user safety reasons, you need to limit social media integration? For example part of our safety policy bans users posting any of their identifiable social media links. In some ways it stops people being able to communicate with each other elsewhere but at the same time limits how we can push our service, a double edged sword.

[kartik786]

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

[CAG CheechDogg]

Originally Posted by kartik786

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

Tell that to my forum's members lol ... Our forums are very busy, today already we have had over 250 new posts which includes new threads which are probably about 25 new threads ....

If you target your intended genre the right way forums will stay very active... heck look at Vb.org, these forums here are pretty active ....