A recent conversation on this board about message boards as a concept had me thinking:
I think many of us know that message boards, as a whole, aren't as frequent as the early days of the internet. I love posting on them but I certainly visited many more sites when I was younger and found random message boards via a web search. I honestly don't know if there has been an overall decrease in people using message boards, but I do feel as if there are fewer of them and they're more consolidated. When I was growing up, I posted on ANTAGONIST message boards on AOL. Antagonist...
And there were a couple other gaming boards on AOL I was on. Then once my parents changed from AOL, I posted on the 1up message boards. Then I posted on IGN. Around the same time, PSX Extreme had decent activity (does it now?), you had GameFAQs then (which I think was busier), Battle.Net had more activity, I think there were several others, and a billion people had a different EZBoard for gaming. Man, EZBoards...
There some smaller boards (like DayOnePatch which split from IGN), Waypoint, etc. but I feel like Reset/Reddit hold a supermajority of activity. I used to post around many boards years ago, but now it's mostly a couple boards for me because that's where the activity is. And all those boards had decent activity, but this is one of the busiest boards I've posted in besides GAF back in the day. Insiders mainly post on Reset (though nowadays everyone has their own Twitter to talk to readers/viewers), but I remember back in the day, Lorne Lanning popped up on PSX Extreme or David Jaffe posted on IGN when he was big with God of War.
I've read nothing and seen no data, so it's just me guessing, but I wonder if Reddit in general has caused many message boards to get less traffic or just shut down. Not in a nefarious way either. I'll put aside something like Twitter which is an easy way for celebrities/writers/directors/developers to talk to people about their work instead of a message board (which I'd assume means fewer people in the industry posting there): when you have every subject imaginable getting a subreddit (and I'm totally cool with that since there's a lot of fun stuff to read on Reddit), it's easy to find a board via Subreddit than googling the internet for a place to post. I used to post on several Beatles boards, but their traffic all died. However, the one Beatles subreddit gets plenty of activity, and if you know about Reddit, maybe you're just more likely to search for a subreddit than search for a message board somewhere else since it's under one umbrella.
I like browsing Reddit, so it's not a knock on it as a concept at all, and I enjoy posting here. I'm just thinking out loud that between that and formerly GAF (now Reset), you have a few mega-sites instead of a billion light/moderate-traffic boards, and maybe people eventually wanted fewer places to post.
Sorry if this sounds rambling or a Dear Diary post lol.
I think many of us know that message boards, as a whole, aren't as frequent as the early days of the internet. I love posting on them but I certainly visited many more sites when I was younger and found random message boards via a web search. I honestly don't know if there has been an overall decrease in people using message boards, but I do feel as if there are fewer of them and they're more consolidated. When I was growing up, I posted on ANTAGONIST message boards on AOL. Antagonist...
And there were a couple other gaming boards on AOL I was on. Then once my parents changed from AOL, I posted on the 1up message boards. Then I posted on IGN. Around the same time, PSX Extreme had decent activity (does it now?), you had GameFAQs then (which I think was busier), Battle.Net had more activity, I think there were several others, and a billion people had a different EZBoard for gaming. Man, EZBoards...
There some smaller boards (like DayOnePatch which split from IGN), Waypoint, etc. but I feel like Reset/Reddit hold a supermajority of activity. I used to post around many boards years ago, but now it's mostly a couple boards for me because that's where the activity is. And all those boards had decent activity, but this is one of the busiest boards I've posted in besides GAF back in the day. Insiders mainly post on Reset (though nowadays everyone has their own Twitter to talk to readers/viewers), but I remember back in the day, Lorne Lanning popped up on PSX Extreme or David Jaffe posted on IGN when he was big with God of War.
I've read nothing and seen no data, so it's just me guessing, but I wonder if Reddit in general has caused many message boards to get less traffic or just shut down. Not in a nefarious way either. I'll put aside something like Twitter which is an easy way for celebrities/writers/directors/developers to talk to people about their work instead of a message board (which I'd assume means fewer people in the industry posting there): when you have every subject imaginable getting a subreddit (and I'm totally cool with that since there's a lot of fun stuff to read on Reddit), it's easy to find a board via Subreddit than googling the internet for a place to post. I used to post on several Beatles boards, but their traffic all died. However, the one Beatles subreddit gets plenty of activity, and if you know about Reddit, maybe you're just more likely to search for a subreddit than search for a message board somewhere else since it's under one umbrella.
I like browsing Reddit, so it's not a knock on it as a concept at all, and I enjoy posting here. I'm just thinking out loud that between that and formerly GAF (now Reset), you have a few mega-sites instead of a billion light/moderate-traffic boards, and maybe people eventually wanted fewer places to post.
Sorry if this sounds rambling or a Dear Diary post lol.
