Are forums making a comeback?

[danish14]

I don't know much about forums. I was born in 2001 and I grew up in the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter era. How famous are forums back then?

With the surge of AI, I saw some people tweeting saying forums will make a comeback because people want human content. And also Perplexity and Google always serve human niche content from Reddit. I think it's true because I've never thought I'd join a forum and here I am. What do you think?

 

[Ryuzaki]

The one thing forums have going for them that people like is "internet points" in the form of post counts (people like this for some reason) or the amount of Likes they get on posts. Those of us who are real old school will look at stuff like "Like to Post Count Ratio" to see how valuable/entertaining we're being.

But no, I don't see a resurgence of forums happening. They're good for private/paid communities but there's also Discord, Facebook Groups, and all that too. I like forums due to the permanence of the posts, which can always be found and so much useful info gets stacked up. But even then, people have come to like Q&A or Curation platforms where things can be upvoted and downvoted, which is what Google actually prefers because it means there's "more" moderation going on (which is a dumb conclusion on their end).

 

[Zach]

I do think forums are coming back, but it's not necessarily "forums" but rather a trend of the kind of content and connections people want.

1. People like more direct Q&A oriented content, which forums often have. If you have a weird mole on your toe, you don't want a 2,000 word WebMD article about moles. But someone on reddit happened to ask about the same exact thing and a bunch of people gave input and advice. Just such a better experience with the content. Forums/communities offer much more laser-targeted content. My personal search history has really become "reddit QUERY" and it saves me so much time + just feels more genuine. People are on Google to solve problems, not read an encyclopedia.

2. Communities (not just forums) are evolving to be a larger piece of the web. It's called vertical social. In the world of so much information, there's simply too much and people are gravitating towards communities in many shapes and forms to help alleviate that. Essentially with the right community you are getting quicker access to people "in the know" about a topic. BuilderSociety is a great place to get into contact with people in-the-know about running & marketing web properties rather than posting an SEO question to your Facebook feed.

 

[Darth]

Yes, and it's as simple as this: with so much AI content spam, Google wants to surface more human written content.

 

[Jesse]

Yes, and it's as simple as this: with so much AI content spam, Google wants to surface more human written content.

The problem I see is that these spaces get filled with AI spam just as easily, and I'm not sure that there's an easy way around that.

 

[Darth]

The problem I see is that these spaces get filled with AI spam just as easily, and I'm not sure that there's an easy way around that.

Agree wholeheartedly.

HCU is Google's botched attempt to deal with it

 

[chubes]

I think forums are making a little bit of a comeback but will never see their former glory. Social media sites are much easier to use, and I think that's a huge part of it.

Traditional forums have a learning curve that filters out a large portion of people who won't even bother trying to figure it out. In the pre social media days there were a lot more people willing to get involved in a forum because there wasn't a mindless alternative yet.

Personally I've always liked forums and been a part of several over the years. I think a certain type of person gravitates towards them and I'm one of them.

I like how the discussion can evolve over time, and I like the collaborative aspect of creating content. The fact that an old topic can be revived with a new response allows for ongoing open ended discussion. Sometimes I view it like having multiple writers work on a blog post.

And yeah, I also like the "internet points" and gamification. It helps to give each forum its own unique personality which is a huge part of the appeal.

 

[marigoldwhale]

Agree wholeheartedly.

HCU is Google's botched attempt to deal with it

I don't think they're making a comeback, just getting more visibility due to this. The forums will eventually become overrun with same issue.

 

[Staircase]

I just signed up for this one and a couple others recently so I'd say they're making a comeback with me, personally.

Obviously N=1 but none of them are empty either.

 

[NetZero]

I never cared about Reddit, didn't participate, didn't use except for SEO linking, and didn't get it, because I thought it was old. I've been using Google searches for any kind product, service, pop culture, review with "reddit" and read what people are saying, and now I appreciate it. I think micro Reddit type forums could chip off some of that traffic.

 

[ToffeeLa]

I don't know much about forums. I was born in 2001 and I grew up in the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter era. How famous are forums back then?

With the surge of AI, I saw some people tweeting saying forums will make a comeback because people want human content. And also Perplexity and Google always serve human niche content from Reddit. I think it's true because I've never thought I'd join a forum and here I am. What do you think?

Not long after you were born, a guy called Clay Shirky gave a speech entitled 'A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy'. (You can find the PDF online and it's a good read.) It was to do with designing social software, which sounds very dry, but actually touched on a lot of how forums and social media work and how group interaction takes place.

To simplify it, he talks about how people join together in communities because of shared interests. Then the communities are taken over by the most enthusiastic and active. Two things tend to happen: the identification of an external enemy and what he called 'religious veneration' of a set of core beliefs which cannot be challenged.

I'm still a member of forums (fora?) but it's true. I could get a rise out of people on any of them because of those two factors. And so you need a standard of committed moderation which suppresses antagonism towards newbies or those who do not believe in the forum orthodoxy. Or else they become an echo chamber for the most vocal members and eventually die.

 

[Hanuman]

There is always that small percent of the internet population that likes to contribute in online communities - be it vBulletin boards, Facebook Groups, Quora, or Reddit.

But I think the argument in the opening post is flawed in that it is derived from the recent interest that Google has shown towards UGC content from reddit or Quora.

That does not necessarily define a future for the message boards themselves - just for the select few that Google chooses to bless. And even if that were to spawn a whole bunch of new message boards, they are going to die away as soon as Google launches yet another algorithmic update that kills these spam boards that were made for Google traffic.

And what's to say these message boards are going to be legit conversations. It's just going to be two AI bots chatting with each other to build activity.

 

[Bus stop]

Hi, new user here.

I'm actually super super bullish about forums but not for the reason people think. They're powerful for controlling the narrative. You develop a large in-depth customer database. If a niche specific forum gets large enough you can often have more more outreach and influence than the multinationals who own the larger brands in it.

With forums it's not the ad revenue which is all that important it's the data you can then use to launch other products with.

People are talking about how they're just going to get flooded with ai content. Well it works both ways doesn't it. You don't catch people posting ai content from the content itself that's hard to do, but as a human you know when something smells like ai. You flag those accounts and let behavioural analysis (which ai is very good at) to rank likely bad actors.