Facebook’s Impact on Discussion Forums

December 29th, 2007 0 comments

Facebook’s growth and new developments are transforming Facebook into the do-it-all web destination. In addition to new applications allowing users to book vacations, play games, and share music, Facebook is also positioning itself to take over a large portion of the content industry, namely: discussion forums.

Facebook has always offered discussion forums in Facebook groups that cover a wide variety of subjects. Facebook groups are far superior to standalone discussion forums for two reasons:

Micro niches - Facebook groups with micro niches can have success, whereas its less likely that there would ever be a standalone site with the niche. For example, University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management Class of 2011 Facebook group. Now, what are the odds that this niche could ever be satisfied without Facebook?
Viral - The success for these groups/discussions depends on its ability to get users, and for Facebook, finding the targeted audience is easy. Through searches, invites, friends, and the news feeds, there are countless was these micro niche groups to have success. The chances of stand alone micro forums to find its targeted users is pretty unlikely.

Although these user created discussions on Facebook have been eating away at standalone forums, the new development of Facebook sponsored pages is what really indicates Facebook could replace the majority of forums. Facebook started creating pages for music artists similar to the iLike music application, and I think this is just a signal for what is to come. Soon, I see Facebook creating pages with forums for every interest on people’s profiles, like fly fishing, knitting, and under water basket weaving. If they start to partner with some of the big names in the content industry like BootsnAll for travel and Engadget for technology, Facebook discussion pages could earn instant credibility. So essentially every topic could have a discussion forum on Facebook, which could definitely hurt many standalone forums.

Even though Facebook is positioning itself to be a monopoly of small communities and forums, I still think standalone forums can have some success if done correctly since they still have their own benefits, like transparency and a true sense of community. But if you are considering an investment in forums, I’d be a little more calculating and careful since Facebook may be trying to take your audience in the future.