With the explosion of consumer-generated/fortified media, why look at an old school technology like forums (bulletin boards, message boards, ...)? Despite the fanfare of blogging and social media, we believe that forums have a number of differences when compared to other social media:
- lower barrier to posting a thought: someone else (the forum owner) has set up the structure, all a user needs to do is login and post if they have a thought, question, or comment
- more diverse contributor base: it's not uncommon for forums to have >100,000 unique posters
Analyzing forum behavior has the opportunity to provide an insightful glimpse into conversations that are occurring. This is unlike analysis of blog, which measures the reach/influence of ideas.
Here's a purposefully vague 2x2 that briefly illustrates the point:
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