I’ve always been a believer in forums in fact I’d credit forums with making the internet what it is today. From the early BBS sites to the first threaded discussions, forums are the original community and remain an internet staple connecting millions of people across tens of thousands of topics. But while social media progresses towards a truly real-time environment, forums continue to trot along much like they always did. Sure there’s been advances… quicker posting, embedded photos and video media, more robust profiles, status updates, user derived groups, and other tools but ultimately forums remain about finding the right category and diving in. That’s not enough.

From where I sit everything in “new” social media is applicable to forums… it just hasn’t been prompted. What forums need is the same centralization other sites have been built around, what forums need is a feed to connect a user to their contributions, to their buddies and to the information that makes sense to them.

Whatever forum technology you have now or are thinking about bringing in down the road be sure it offers a portal, a way to collapse information and to get users from point A to the point B they want without surfing through dozens of sub-categories and hundreds of links. I’ve recently come up with my own interface for the vBulletin forum system which provides an a feed with elements including posts, profile updates, social group requests and much more. While it’s too early to talk about the impact it had, the initial comments from the sites using it and their users has been positive. I suspect those that really embrace taking their forum from a list of categories to a feed will see more activity and more visits as their users are able to sort through the noise quicker.