Is Facebook ruining Forums?

[Threeboy]

Also with Facebook people use real names so they're not as dickish.

[Alfa1]

Thats a good point. I think delicate content forums are somewhat protected from facebook.

The facebook comments plugin is very interesting. I see more and more news outlets use it, so that the discussion threads actually take place on facebook, but appear to be on the site of the news outlet. I think this is a superior web 2.0 move that facebook made.

[NoWorriesClub]

I don't use facebook much but i think it can add a good way to bring more people into your forums.

[ericwall]

Yes I disabled my Facebook account a long time ago

[htibsn]

why do u look for fb forum. why you donot use fb directly.

[cyberls]

facebook helps me kill time. Nothing more than that. Can know updates of family and friends. I use forums more than FB ,if i have a question to be answered hw can FB help me?..

[Threeboy]

The 'discussion' boards on facebook still suck and no one uses them so forums still have their place... for now

[rootsxrocks]

I do not see face book as Ruining my community, in fact it's bid to be the "borg" of the internet and allowing false names and businesses to register as people is slowly turning it into myspace and away from a more personable local community. One thing that has really annoyed me is the pretentious attitude FB has that it can pick who of my friends that I desire to see updates from and is selective about what it displays to each user without many being aware of this censorship.
Users that have not learned to block applications like Mafia wars ect.... become tired of the spammish nature of what they are seeing and stop looking at it a social interaction.
Some folks like to be able to pick there friends and only hear those with like opinions however more intelligent users desire controversy and feedback that can not be achieved in a hand picked audience. My forum has grown tremendously from the publication and integration with FB. I do like it for the use of real names as it has brought me back into contact with many old acquaintance and school mates that I would not have found nor would have interest in my local community, FB has its place and I will use it to promote my local and more personable format, I do not want to see VB morph into FB however I would like to see VB integrate some of the features that do make FB desirable and would not mind creating a section of the forum that was a running threaded tree structure with SMS up datable status messages. Something like http://b3ta.com/links/ in fact I would pay for such a module if someone creates one.

[MRGTB]

I do think FB is now starting to lose some of it's appeal with people. Ever since the privacy problems raised it's ugly head with it, they seem to have been slowing down in getting as many new users each year (still hugely popular though). Or maybe many are just getting bored with it now. I never could understand the appeal of it with all those silly kid games you keep getting emailed to install and play. Like that daft - farm game.

[Alfa1]

Me neither. Still I lost some of my most zealous contributors for many months to that daft farm game...

[Mark.B]

Reminds me of "Second Life". A couple of years ago I was given dire warnings opf how *everyone* was leaving forums to go to this Second Life thing. I looked at it and thought "wot a load of awld sh*te". Which indeed it was.

I even had people telling me I should set up a presence on Second Life and wind down my forums, encouraging people to go there instead. Wot rot! Good job I didn't take any notice, who goes to Second Life these days? Hardly anyone, that's who!

[rootsxrocks]

I feel like a twit cause I just created a twitter account for my site so I can keep members updated in case of site failure. ( or when I am mobile since VB is lagging so drastically)
As an old forum member I understand the limited communication of a single venue and I will try to embrace a constant contact for members by assorted means, but I will never forget that i must maintain a desirable environment and compete with others for my members time.

[MRGTB]

Reminds me of "Second Life". A couple of years ago I was given dire warnings opf how *everyone* was leaving forums to go to this Second Life thing. I looked at it and thought "wot a load of awld sh*te". Which indeed it was.

I even had people telling me I should set up a presence on Second Life and wind down my forums, encouraging people to go there instead. Wot rot! Good job I didn't take any notice, who goes to Second Life these days? Hardly anyone, that's who!

Well maybe your correct with a lot of what you say, that FaceBook is NOT the sole evil destroyer of forums. However, it's not doing that bad with the 9 billion users reported as using Facebook recently, that must have some effect on forums. But one thing you cannot deny is that forum activity is a hollow shell of what it was 6-10 years ago. I've been on the web long enough myself to have seen it happening in that time. Nobody is saying your not going to get the odd forum that still does very well, but don't judge all off that one, or a few. Across the board in general with them all, things have changed drastically.

Look at your own forum as an example. Over a million posts listed there and I just looked and saw you have two members online. Not exactly mind blowing statistics is it for a community with so many threads and posts listed on it? I understand that your a very strong supporter of forums, but sometimes you have to face facts, come out the clouds and back to reality.

[machio]

I think the best thing to do is put out your idea period. You have to realize that some things are cyclical and people can be very fickle. With your own variety and sense of style when the pendulum swings back you will be ready and able to get in on the creativity that people will be longing for.

[Mark.B]

Well maybe your correct with a lot of what you say, that FaceBook is NOT the sole evil destroyer of forums. However, it's not doing that bad with the 9 billion users reported as using Facebook recently, that must have some effect on forums. But one thing you cannot deny is that forum activity is a hollow shell of what it was 6-10 years ago. I've been on the web long enough myself to have seen it happening in that time. Nobody is saying your not going to get the odd forum that still does very well, but don't judge all off that one, or a few. Across the board in general with them all, things have changed drastically.

Look at your own forum as an example. Over a million posts listed there and I just looked and saw you have two members online. Not exactly mind blowing statistics is it for a community with so many threads and posts listed on it? I understand that your a very strong supporter of forums, but sometimes you have to face facts, come out the clouds and back to reality.

Hold on...you're surprised that a predominantly UK-centric forum has *only* two members online at 3am? Errrm...actually I'm quite impressed that there were any at all. Chances are they were Americans where it wasn't the early hours of the morning.

You keep pulling my forum out as some sort of proof that forums are dying, how busy did you think mine ever was? Last week I had 32 active posting members online at the same time, that is extremely good for us and as good as its ever been, if not better. Mine is not some massive site with hundreds online at a time, and never has been.

I've actually just decreased the number of potential users by four by banning four serious troublemakers who keep wittering on about legal threats every time someone insults them.

As for the Facebook issue, you're oversimplifying things. Just because something becomes popular on the internet doesn't mean everyone STOPS doing OTHER things. I'm sure some people have left forums altogether and now only post status updates on Facebook about how they've just hung their washing out, or how many times they've played "Farmville" today. If that's the level of interaction they like, chances are they weren't much of an asset to many forums in the first place.

What's actually happening in a lot of cases is people spend time online doing lots of different things. They were never "only in forums" to start with, and they are not "only in forums" now.

I'll tell you what IS killing forums though - and I doubt you will disagree with me. Commercialisation and "monetization". Ads everywhere! Click this! Subscribe to this! "Buy a subscription and you can have an avatar" - yeah, clear off. Or better still "make a post and we'll shove a bloody Google ad write in the middle of your post".

Forums were popular because most people set up their communities for the love of doing it, and perhaps asked for donations occasionally, or maybe ran one small advert somewhere to assist with server costs. But generally it was people's hobbies and they paid for it out of their own pocket. People accepted adverts on proper commercial sites but not on hobby boards.

Now though, too many people are in it for the money, they are not interested in how good their community is, only in how many ad clicks they can get out of it. People soon suss that out, and they refuse to be part of someone's private profiteering machine. So they leave.

THAT is what is killing forums. Blaming Facebook is just a cop-out.

My site carries no ads. It is a hobby, a labour of love. We occasionally ask for donations in an unobtrusive way, and we get perhaps one month's server costs back out of every four or five months. People recognise that, and they like it, because there is no agenda.