Blogs vs forums

Let’s cut to the chase - blogs as a community medium are over-rated - if it’s community you want to see online, no blog can match the massive readership influence that online forums have.

If blogs are like newspaper columns, then forums are entire newspapers unto themselves.

Even “A-list” bloggers such as John Battelle, Jeremy Zawodny, Robert Scoble, and co, pale into significance compared to the massive publishing outreach that big forums have - Sitepoint, Webmasterworld, WebHostingTalk, SEW, and others.

And if those aren’t big enough for you…

The biggest known individual forum online is Gaia Online - a role-playing forum for Anime fans.

With over 3 million members posting nearly a half-billion posts, it forms the pinnacle of a bare truth - if it’s publishing influence you want, a blog is a minor compared to the potential of forums.

Blogs are one-person soapboxes - forums are real communities where everyone can have a box to stand on.

Where blogs win out is their accessibility - it is usually much easier for the novice to have a blog than set up a forum.

But while people talk about the influence of blogs and the blogosphere, let’s remind ourselves how limited this is as a media and publishing platform, compared to the vast online community forums.

Now that the links that held the blogosphere together have been crippled, blogs are left to stand by themselves.

And in terms of publishing and marketing potential, the majority of blogs simply cannot compare to the majority of forums in these regards.