Social Meida; Love it or Hate it?

  • Leader
    September 27, 2022 10:35 AM CDT

    The influence of social media has changed the relevance of forums as they struggled to compete against the new behemoths because all of a sudden forums were becoming obsolete in both their platform design and not enough features to keep up with the new social media websites. The argument for forums, is that they are much like a library or encyclopedia of information pertaining to the niche and the information is easier to find as opposed to quick comments that get buried quickly on a social media website. Forums will never die because of their uniqueness, however, it does take just as unique visions from web-site owners to create that atmosphere for members to stay drawn to return everyday for the content, member friendships and good conversation.

    The forums that weathered that storm, were already forums that had a long history, established member base and provided specific content. Forum platforms, tried to upgrade their versions to either look like big websites or added some similar features. I used the vBulletin forum platform on a previous website I had and loved all of the features. I'm just a hopeless classic, which is why I added a forum setting to Friend's Realm making Friend's Realm a new generation hybrid. Now all websites seem to have a similar template appearance but not all websites are the same. I believe there's a certain point of integrity and principle that one has to determine where you stand. I do not stand with websites that are manipulative, share my data, account hacking, are always in the news because their platform is biased, and now they have to have a name change to save themselves from their deceptive practices.

    For me personally, I built Friend's Realm for the good reasons and so much more. I found that discerning people need to start from a place of trust and the only way to reflect values is to take that vulnerable step and share thoughts. I'm also just a forum throwback, remembering some really good days when people just talked, no hate, no agenda, made implicit but fun coffee spewing remarks and in general looked forward to friend's new posts. The classic websites in the past, member's just posted and interacted and weren't afraid to say what they felt about a topic. I want to see that vibe make a comeback at Friend's Realm.