Conditioning Is Killing Forums

// December 23rd, 2007 // Blog & Tech Items, Brain Dump

The internet (and the world) are progressing into the cliched “Web 2.0″ and soon onto, I dunno, web 2.5? 3.0? Yet so many places are still trying to flog their forums and trying desperately to attract users… Why? Forums are dead.

A friend of mine mentioned that the number one habit to break for entrepreneurs is to not check their email 100 times per day, but only check a couple times – 3 at the most! Three is all well and good, yet what about conditioning? Over however long it has been that you have been checking and answering emails, you have been conditioning other people as to your response time. If you check your email continuously and you generally respond within minutes, the people who email you even on a semi-frequent basis have been conditioned to expect a response quickly. (you know you’re in this trap when people call you to make sure you received their email because you didn’t respond right away…)

Want another example of conditioning before we continue? Sure you do! McDonald’s established a long time ago that you go to the counter, place your order, carry your order to your own table, eat said order, then clear your own table placing trash in the receptacle and the tray on top. They conditioned their customers to do all of this and many food chains followed suit… except, the beloved chain of Canada: Tim Horton’s.

Tim Horton’s decided a few years back that they would expand from coffee, donuts and muffins to a wider menu offering such things as soups, sandwiches, etc. etc.. The challenge is that somewhere along the line they forgot that people were conditioned to clear their own tables. So now, when you walk into a Tim’s, you will find tables that are uncleared, or people wandering about with a tray of real dishes wondering where to put them because they’ve been conditioned to clean up after themselves! Yes, it is quite nice to have an actual china plate with my club sandwich, yet conditioning tells me to clear my table, however, there is no place to put my dishes. So, now I have to awkwardly leave them on the table hoping that someone will come by and clear them for me, yet looking around, apparently clearing dishes that people can’t clear themselves is low on the priority list…

Ok, so what the heck does all this conditioning have to do with forums? Actually, quite a bit. See, as companies look to “Web 2.0″ as something they should be a part of, many look at forums as a great too to attract and retain visitors… well, it WAS, but when you’re slow to get started, you’re not looking at what is current are you?

From the business side that doesn’t completely understand “this web stuff” forums are quickly recognized as “something we can put on our website where people will create an account, we’ll have their information for marketing, and they’ll keep coming back because they have an account with us!“. Just makes you laugh doesn’t it?

The challenge now is that anyone who is a frequent user of the web (2.0) is being conditioned to visit a site, leave a comment, and continue on.

Brief, yet meaningful exchanges.

Forums are anything but brief – meaningful, perhaps (depends on the forum), yet the time involved in establishing an account, and actually finding and participating in an exchange is too long.

A certain media outlet I’m familiar with hosts a “live chat” on specific days, at specific times, with a specific person within their forums. At first it seems like a great idea and for being relatively new the success of it is pretty good. People get to come onto the forums and “interact” with the host, ask questions and leave comments. Great. The problem is that most of their visitors are not particularly “web savvy” and the act of setting up an account to be able to access the forums is absolutely insane. Insane to the point where I can’t even be bothered and I actually know what I’m doing.

When compared to something like Liz Strauss‘ Tuesday night open mic event, trying to leave a comment in a forum is like trying to obtain a passport these days, whereas leaving a comment on a blog and hitting “refresh” is like flashing your drivers license at the beer store. Yes, they’re both IDs (conversations), yet one requires a signature in blood and 50 witnesses, whereas the other couldn’t be easier.

Web 2.0 and even email over the years is conditioning us for brief yet meaningful exchanges – forums are not aligned with this conditioning. Now, do I use forums? Yes. I subscribe to a couple forums for business and have proven to be worth their weight in gold (ie. Zen Cart Forums – if those guys don’t know the answer, you’re pretty much screwed), yet brief and meaningful is relegated to comments on blogs and emails.

If you have a blog, you don’t need forums. It’s interesting because this media outlet has blogs which are doing quite well. Setting up a format much like Liz’s would likely see more traffic, would keep things to just two areas (blog & main site) as opposed to 3 (blog, main site, and forums), and it would keep likely 99.9% of their visitors happy because it is SO easy on the blogs. If they want to venture into the site/forums and create an account – great, no problem – but if all you want to do is ask a simple question, then it should be easy.

If we are being conditioned in one direction, why use something which goes against it and is not likely to change things back?