Social Discussion, Social Networking, and Social Sharing

[JoelR]

Forums are often compared to social networking sites, often in the context of, "are forums dying??"

There's a nuance between all of these different platforms, where: 

Forums are based on discussions around topics

Social Networking sites are based on connections around people

Social Sharing and Broadcasting is based on publishing content 

This is not to say that your community can't contain flavors of all three.  For example, one of the strengths of IPS is it's multiple applications where you can use Pages or Courses or a third party Video app for Social Sharing and Broadcasting to publish information to others, while using Forums for social discussion.  Do you have a mix of all three on your site, do you only focus on one of these, and how do you think you can competitively position yourself against other platforms?

[Dilip]

For me, it is like small-scale industries vs corporates. The fight between the big and small.

But if we analyse properly, forums are very slow compared to social media. Messenger apps and groups in it are effectively taking customers off from conventional social media platforms. Look how much Discord and Slack managed to score.

 

[JoelR]

32 minutes ago, Dilip said:

For me, it is like small-scale industries vs corporates. The fight between the big and small.

But if we analyse properly, forums are very slow compared to social media. Messenger apps and groups in it are effectively taking customers off from conventional social media platforms. Look how much Discord and Slack managed to score.

 

I've come to the realization that forums (and forum developers) won't evolve. They make forums.  They will always make forums. And while they may add some features here and there, fundamentally they will never make the evolutionary jump to another kind of platform. 

What does that mean for forum owners?

[Dilip]

It is like asking WordPress to include a page builder by default. But hey, WordPress already have Gutenberg / Blocks.

[Nomad]

I run forums mainly for social discussion. My forums are niche-based and I am trying to build a community that people can use as a resource site to learn about the topic or share their views on the topic. I believe communities can also explore social networking and social sharing option but these two fields are heavily captured by social media platforms, and forums do not have a better chance on these areas.

[Maria]

I do not see room for social networking and social sharing on online communities, however, I believe communities have better chance for social discussion compared to social media platforms.

[Kane]

One of the most used features on social media is social broadcasting, they allow you top share videos stream videos, this feature is non-existent on online communities. Online communities are good for text based content, social media is for visual content.