Trends in online community

Message boards have gone out of fashion, haven't they? I was checking out the Bleak House pages on pbs.org and had an urge to remark on the Masterpiece Theatre forums about literary adaptations. I posted, then learned my entry was the first posted in that particular forum category since 2001.

This makes sense to me. Right around 1999-2001 was the heyday of the message board. I was employed by an online community consulting firm around that time. The company's founder decided after the bubble burst that a more profitable focus was CRM, and the firm since has been sold.

(Personally, I do think there's still money to be made in consulting and systems for user interaction but it's probably not a huge build-to-flip or race-to-IPO proposition. We know lots about user interaction from message boards that could be applied to blog conversations, but lots of folks seem to act like visitors have only been leaving their opinions on the internet in the last year or two!)

If you think about it that's also about the time when you were likely to see links to "Boards" or "Community" as prominent main forks from many home pages. You still do, but it's not so trendy to do it anymore.

I think that's because more web sites of all kinds have become more blog-like, inviting conversation in a decentralized way throughout a site. It's probably better that way, more 2-way and integrated.

I do think it would be better for sites to clear away their dead forums. There is nothing else that screams so loudly, "Nobody ever comes here!" It's like a restaurant with no cars in the parking lot.