It’s not easy to give an opinion about this. Every year that same talk comes up that forums are ending, and in the end they never end.
What we can see is that old and new forums are shutting down. We can mention several examples: Players, Politz, UOL Jogos… the list is long.
We also notice that the new generation doesn’t even know what forums are or how to use them. Most of the users we see in large communities like IGN, Adrenaline and Outerspace are users who are already over 30.
But in the old days we also didn’t have this many platforms like we do now, right? Like Discord, Reddit… but that’s actually a good thing. The world really has to evolve.
But then why use forums nowadays? What do you do in forums that you can’t do on Discord and vice versa?
Are we reaching the end of the forum era?
I don’t think so.
ResetEra has just been sold for $4 million. Forums like IGN gain more users every day.
I believe forums will still survive for a while, but they will remain a niche product. I use Reddit and Discord, but I prefer forums because the communication format is better for storing information and absorbing content. On Discord it’s fast food (messages get lost quickly); on Reddit they’re also stored, but the layout is not as pleasant as that of forums.
I disagree. Only old folks use this anyway. Not even Google brings up forum results. The forum era is already over. We have to accept that and open the door to new technologies. Something easier to use.
I’m not talking about here specifically, but I think this forum layout is very outdated. Reddit stood out because it managed to offer something different with a reply layout that’s easy to read.
However, I think the fediverse is a very valid way to change that.
I disagree, Reddit is an example both as a community and commercially that even in an age of fast content people still look for answers and human topics, and that will never go out of style. Of course, from time to time we might become more niche or become popular again, but in the end the forum format, even if in an old skin, is still very much sought after, and in this fatigue people feel with social networks, forums have kept the spirit of the internet alive for years and are once again becoming popular starting from Reddit, Discourse and co.
We have examples of forums with old‑school skins that are super crowded, such as IGN, or IT forums like Adrenaline, Hardware, Tecnoblog, or Dion Linux Plus itself, which embraced Discourse.
And “crapification” is the finish line of all fast‑content social networks, while forums are still active and have loyal members who won’t leave them for anything. And considering that nowadays retention is more important than views, as in the example mentioned, the teenagers of the 2000s popularized forums and in their 30s+ they still remain faithful to their communities.
META itself integrated Threads into the fediverse because they know the trouble they’re going to face! To sum up my point of view, we will always look for places that have humans to exchange all kinds of feelings and information, because I guarantee that nobody likes to go on TT and keep interacting with bots
