Forums v Social Media

This isn't about which you prefer, or why you hate Facebook, or what-have-you. I'd like to try to keep it free of personal opinion and anecdotal stuff, and actually look at the strengths and weaknesses of each. So lets avoid the "Social media sux!" and "Forums are dead!" part of the conversation.

So, it's certainly true that social media is impacting forums. It's also true that social media can't directly replace forums - it actually has a slightly different function, although it overlaps.

Social Media is:

• quicker and easier to access
• more people already have access and can join your group/page/community with a single click
• more suited to linking, sharing and virality, but not to storing content
• suited to very quick posts/images which can very quickly generate a long discussion
• quicker at getting responses
• baked into much of the infrastructure you already use (especially on mobile)
• temporary in that discussions disappear quickly and are not seen again
• backed by huge multinational megcorps
• better at outreach
• subject to the whims/algorithms of the parent corporation
• group/page admins don't really own their own page
• groups/pages/communities can be created with just a click
• not very customizable

Forums are:

• more of a barrier to access
• not suited to very quick posts
• more in-depth
• able to archive information, but not suited to sharing a virality
• more suited to longer (timewise) discussions
• not integrated into mobile platforms
• usually (but not always) owned by individuals or small companies
• subject to the whims of forum owners
• take work to build and maintain
• customizable

That's just a few things. What other strengths and weaknesses do each have? One thing I think is interesting is that social media is designed to link to content, whereas forums are designed to hold content.

Morrus said:

Social Media is:

• quicker and easier to access
• more people already have access and can join your group/page/community with a single click
• more suited to linking, sharing and virality, but not to storing content
• suited to very quick posts/images which can very quickly generate a long discussion
• quicker at getting responses
• baked into much of the infrastructure you already use (especially on mobile)
• temporary in that discussions disappear quickly and are not seen again
• backed by huge multinational megcorps
• better at outreach
• subject to the whims/algorithms of the parent corporation
• group/page admins don't really own their own page
• groups/pages/communities can be created with just a click
• not very customizable

Forums are:

• more of a barrier to access
• not suited to very quick posts
• more in-depth
• able to archive information, but not suited to sharing a virality
• more suited to longer (timewise) discussions
• not integrated into mobile platforms
• usually (but not always) owned by individuals or small companies
• subject to the whims of forum owners
• take work to build and maintain
• customizable

Click to expand...

For some folks, the "easier to access" isn't true. One doesn't need to login to read many forums. Social media seems to need a login, which is annoying.

Also, the "backed into the infrastructure" is true only for particular subsets of people. That subset might be the much larger group, but, there are still folks to prefer using a browser over the more lightweight media. Also, a person who spends a lot of time on a laptop or workstation might find a browser a much more baked in tool, or at least a much more convenient one.

The "customizable" point changes if you change focus from site admin to user. I can't speak very much on the admin side, but I would presume that operators have less control than they have over their administered forums. But, there a user, I thought there were a lot of tools that allow users to customize which feeds they receive, and where the information is sent?

A data point: mmo-champion has captures of tweets (e.g., from Ghostcrawler). I much prefer to see a snapshot of the latest tweets, much more than looking for these in real-time. I'd probably go batty if I had to deal with a barrage of tweets interrupting my day. But, that is certainly just one perspective, and I imagine lots of folks want the tweets in real-time.

That is, what is a plus is highly dependent on one's preferred mode of interaction.

Of course, this may all be moot. The number of people using social media may make forums largely obsolete dinosaurs, at least for most mainstream information. Forums may be relegated to text rich communities, which are a special and limited case in comparison to the mainstream.

Thx!

TomB

Not sure if it outside of the scope of your question, but the discussion maybe should include a nearby vehicle, the wiki. If forums diminish, what does that say about wikis?

One distinction is the amount of maintenance which is required by forums and wiki's: Both take an active involvement to maintain the captured information.

Also, it seems that we can put the three types of interaction as a progression:

Real-time; interactive (tweets)
Non-real-time; interactive (forum)
Non-real-time; non-interactive (wiki)

I think the properties of each will self organize along this progression.

Thx!

TomB

I don't really find that social media lends itself well to ongoing discussion. It's more about sound-bites (text bites?), than it is drawn out conversations. The latter is where forums seem to excel.

I prefer both for different things. They may have areas that overlap, but they have enough that doesn't. WoTC just sucked hard at making their forums user friendly¹.


[sblock=1]I assume that's what prompted this thread.
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/wizards-coast-community-forums-be-shut-down
[/sblock]

One thing I favor forums over social media for is segregation of interests.

This may sound like opinion (probably is), but it is based on the functional differences of social media vs. forums.

I don't LIKE or join pages or groups because it exposes my name to people outside of my actual friend's list on FaceBook.

I don't want all my friendslist to know I like Underwater Basket Weaving or ENWorld or to see what I post about on those sites. Stupid ideas I explore here are not meant to be seen outside of here. So doing that stuff in Facebook is bad.

I don't use my real name on FB. All my friends in FB are people I really know, so they know it is me. But it also means that my real name cannot be googled and led directly to some dumb pic/post of me by a potential employer ( I work in tech, it happens).

I'm also active on NextDoor.com, which is like social media in interface, but locked down to just my neighborhood. Which means it acts like a forum for my purposes of segregation of interests. What happens on the site, stays in the site. Trying to do neighborhood relations on an FB group would cause bleed-over of what those members want to keep private. FB's wiggly privacy settings and promiscuous defaults means that the average person shares more than they mean to.



Another functional difference between social media and forums, is that forums are wordier. I like to read. I would prefer to read a post or news article than watch a youtube video. Social media is all about short text or pics, not actual words or lengthy explanation of ideas. It's the MTV short attention span of the internet.

tomBitonti said:

Not sure if it outside of the scope of your question, but the discussion maybe should include a nearby vehicle, the wiki. If forums diminish, what does that say about wikis?

One distinction is the amount of maintenance which is required by forums and wiki's: Both take an active involvement to maintain the captured information.

Also, it seems that we can put the three types of interaction as a progression:

Real-time; interactive (tweets)
Non-real-time; interactive (forum)
Non-real-time; non-interactive (wiki)

I think the properties of each will self organize along this progression.

Thx!

TomB

Click to expand...

I would say a wiki is better at containing articles, etc. Forums are also transient and shifting, making it hard to go back and find something (search tools of forums always suck and don't get used). But forums do operate at a slower pace than social media

Social Media sites are more likely to be blocked for people browsing at the workplace than are discussion forums.

Janx said:

One thing I favor forums over social media for is segregation of interests.

This may sound like opinion (probably is), but it is based on the functional differences of social media vs. forums.

I don't LIKE or join pages or groups because it exposes my name to people outside of my actual friend's list on FaceBook.

I don't want all my friendslist to know I like Underwater Basket Weaving or ENWorld or to see what I post about on those sites. Stupid ideas I explore here are not meant to be seen outside of here. So doing that stuff in Facebook is bad.

I don't use my real name on FB. All my friends in FB are people I really know, so they know it is me. But it also means that my real name cannot be googled and led directly to some dumb pic/post of me by a potential employer ( I work in tech, it happens).

I'm also active on NextDoor.com, which is like social media in interface, but locked down to just my neighborhood. Which means it acts like a forum for my purposes of segregation of interests. What happens on the site, stays in the site. Trying to do neighborhood relations on an FB group would cause bleed-over of what those members want to keep private. FB's wiggly privacy settings and promiscuous defaults means that the average person shares more than they mean to.

Another functional difference between social media and forums, is that forums are wordier. I like to read. I would prefer to read a post or news article than watch a youtube video. Social media is all about short text or pics, not actual words or lengthy explanation of ideas. It's the MTV short attention span of the internet.

Click to expand...

A few of my friends on Facebook (not to be confused with Facebook Friends) who used pseudonyms have been forced to use real names, due to complaints from other users (specifically, politically motivated pages).

With my motorsports photography and chainmailing/jewellery sidelines I specifically use Facebook to somewhat increase my profile though I don't promiscuously 'friend' people, nor do I leave my security settings wide open.

I think that social media is good for the: "this is new" or "I like this" little soundbytes of information. I don't think that it allows for the in-depth discussions and reviews that forums do.