Matt,
I wasn't trying to imply that facebook was better than forums. I was just making the observation that many people have migrated from forums to facebook and/or blogs. For their own reasons, they are finding what they need there.
You bring up AOL, and that proves the point that the world changes at a rapid pace. Before AOL, before the World Wide Web, there was Prodigy. There were usenet groups - the first form of online social networking. Then there were forums and instant messaging. Texting has pretty much replaced IM. Forums (
unfortunately in my opinion) are being upstaged by facebook, etc. Things evolve and change. We're going to see another big change when Google Plus is released to the general public.
I see the use of the term 'social networking' like it's a bad thing. But forums and all these other things are indeed social networking also. Some of the newer forms allow me to control with whom I interact. Some people may have issues with the games on facebook, but you don't have to play them - and it only takes one click to completely block. Here, if I don't like a particular type of post, I just have to keep wading through it to get to the good stuff. I want to read & discuss cooking - I am not interested in seeing hundreds of recipes reposted from someone's cookbook collection. I have my own cookbook collection. So I wade through everything and see if there's something today that interests me. More often than not, there isn't.
On a forum, you are at the mercy of the moderator to determine what is or isn't appropriate content. On facebook and blogs, you decided for yourself what can be on your page. My blood boils every time I see a political post on a food forum. But I can't do anything about it. So the mods get to make their statement, but no one else can or it becomes an argument which the member can never win. You can evidence that on all small forums, including this one. If you go through the history, you find that anyone who argues with the mods usually ends up banned. On other forms of networking, I am free to respond without the threat of being 'banned' or I can just choose to delete the comments. Therefore, the forum takes on the personality of the individual in control. On a blog, it takes on my own personality.
Unfortunately, I think that those of us who prefer forums are a dying breed. Many forums are lucky to get a small handful of new posts per day. People are migrating to newer forms of interaction. Forums are slowly going the way of usenet. That's just the way of the world. Those of us (myself included) that cling to the older forms of networking will find ourselves in an ever smaller circle of friends. We will continue to cry, "Where did everybody go?"
