Are Blogs the new Forums?
Before I start this post I must confess I love forums, I don?t know why I just do. It could be the discussions or it could be the cool things people post but I am addicted.
I noticed on my travels through Blogosphere that there were no forums on any of main tech blogs I like. I figured I try and change that so I sent TechCrunch?s Guru Mike Arrington a long email about getting a forum on his site but alas he didn?t go for it (well not yet). My next target was Allen over a CenterNetworks but to my joy he didn?t need asking as he had just set some forums up. Ok great I thought we now have 2 forums for web 2.0ers; ours and CenterNetworks over there.
Now will people use them?
Our forums have been open a while and there are a handful of posts and over at CenterNetworks they have a similar amount. Allen has even taken to bribing visitors with postcards to get them to post in there :p
So with empty forums in the world of Blogosphere it got me thinking do we need forums when people can just use comments to discuss topics?
Lets look at the function of a forum.
Users post messages for discussion.
Users post messages discussing other messages.
These discussions are normally in categorised in to sub forums.
Now lets look at the function of a Blog
A Blogger posts something interesting.
Visitors post comments on the Blogger?s post.
The Blogger?s posts are normally categorised and tagged.
As you can see the core functions of both Blogs and forums are almost identical.
The biggest gap between the 2 is the power of the user, in Blogs the only person with the power to create a new discussion is the Blogger, where as in forums anyone can. However it is so easy for people to start Blogging today that if people want to start their own discussion they can just do it on their own Blogs.
So do I think that Blogs are the new forums?
Yes, and I?d like to think of Blogosphere as being one giant forum.
I still love forums and would like it if more people used them to engage with each other.
P.S don?t forget to drop by our forums.
UPDATE: Techcrunch now has some forums. I am now very happy.
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