Web Forums vs FB and Twitter

[KirinMan]

I have noticed that over the past year or so the number of people that participate on forums like JRef have dwindled down to their hardcore users and the occasional poster looking for some specific information.

Seems to me at least that a large reason for this has been the explosion of FB and Twitter.

What do you think? Have forums become dinosaurs? What would it take to bring them back?

 

[Mike Cash]

And I thought it was just a natural drop-off in the number of people fascinated with Japan (or more accurately: Japanese pop culture).

But considering there is an increasing number of ways and places for people to spend their time and that there are still the same number of hours in a day, a certain drop-off is probably unavoidable. I have no idea what Facebook is all about, as I have never used it (nor do I intend to). I also missed the MySpace boom. Twitter could more aptly have been named Twaddle.

It took me a while to reconcile myself even to web forums such as JREF, having come from a background of USENET. Anybody who thinks I'm blunt here should have seen what I was like when posting on unmoderated USENET forums.

 

[Davey]

I think that it is definetely one of the reasons why the communities are smaller on forums. People ask questions, and when they know what they want to know they leave, might come back if they have another question or use google where they question can be found immediately so there sometimes isn't any need to ask it. Back in the days, people would come to the forum to ask questions and to find people that share their interest were as someone can now find that by indeed using facebook or twitter, or other social network sites.

People who posted often, donated, or posted quality posts received privileges such as more PM space , bigger avatars, etc. But who cares about these kind of things anymore? What kind of privileges would be good to receive?

Lowering the amount of needed posts before you can post a URL might attract more newbies to post more.

In our case, I really think that lacking content, and regularly updating content are the reasons that we don't get a lot of people to sign up.

We recently decided to use the VBSEO plugin , which makes urls more keyword friendly and should attract more visitors.

Thank you for posting this KirinMan because it is a problem at the moment, so any tips and ideas for our site would be great.

 

[KirinMan]

Well, all I can say for the moment is that I will think about it and post anything that might come to mind. Maybe an updated site suggestions or recommendations thread would be a start to ask current members for their ideas too.