How to compete with Discord and Reddit?

[Al]

Reddit is among the most popular social media worldwide, with an estimated 55.79 million daily active users and 1.660 billion monthly active users in 2023. It was valued at US $10 billion in 2021, with advertising revenue contributing $350 million.

Discord is an online community platform featuring video, voice, and text chat and a separate server for different groups for users to communicate and socialize. It has more than 150 million monthly users ages 13 and above.

Is it possible to compete with these two giant social media companies when it comes to building and promoting a successful forum? Each requires just a single registration to then talk about anything across any subject. Anyone can create a discord server or subreddit and have access to - instant access - to millions of pre-registered users. How is it then possible for someone to launch and make successful a traditional internet forum?

My history is of forums back when there was little in the way of competition from the likes of social media. Forums were the ‘in vogue’ medium for internet communities to communicate. The likes of Facebook and Twitter made a dent in that. Discord and Reddit almost killed off forums.

My question is two-fold. First, how can one compete against such behemoths? Second, how have you ensured your forum is successful?

 

[Grant]

The sad truth is that Discord is a possible forum killer. Now that it even has it's own thread feature, it is hard for some people to consider forums anymore as most people tend to flock to discord. Plus with the amount of servers available, it's almost like a forum within a forum where you don't have to sign up at each one, just join and you're in.

I love forums, but I do see the writing on the wall. Forums like bizdustry will be around for years to come, but when it comes to smaller forums, the chance of their survival is something I don't know.

I don't even think Reddit is even as bad. I don't even like using reddit and I don't think it's strong enough to kill off forums. But Discord is something I do worry about.

As for competing with Discord and Reddit, I think you need to come up with forums that are unique and different, and can keep people around. Maybe find a gimmick that people could be into for your forum. Maybe include games, a world for your forum. Look at Gaia I think it is, it's a forum that was like a MMOrpg or something.

If you can find a gimmick that would entice people over, you might have something.

 

[Cory1]

My forum niche is related to offering support and coding solutions for particular forum software, so it's not really a niche I have to worry about competing with social networks or messaging services too much. I try to offer the most codes and skins possible I can build to make my forum stand out.

 

[Good-Person]

The sad truth is that Discord is a possible forum killer. Now that it even has it's own thread feature, it is hard for some people to consider forums anymore as most people tend to flock to discord. Plus with the amount of servers available, it's almost like a forum within a forum where you don't have to sign up at each one, just join and you're in.

I love forums, but I do see the writing on the wall. Forums like bizdustry will be around for years to come, but when it comes to smaller forums, the chance of their survival is something I don't know.

I don't even think Reddit is even as bad. I don't even like using reddit and I don't think it's strong enough to kill off forums. But Discord is something I do worry about.

As for competing with Discord and Reddit, I think you need to come up with forums that are unique and different, and can keep people around. Maybe find a gimmick that people could be into for your forum. Maybe include games, a world for your forum. Look at Gaia I think it is, it's a forum that was like a MMOrpg or something.

If you can find a gimmick that would entice people over, you might have something.

I do not think that discord is a forum killer. Social media websites such as discord do not pay members to post. On the other hand, there are many forums on the internet that pay their members to post comments and content. As long as forums are paying their members, many members would be attracted to such kind of forums till a long time.

 

[Kane]

let's be realistic, as a forum owner, we cannot compete with discord or reddit. Even though the history of online foirums is older than the social media platform, social media platforms took the world by storm, where as online communities are on the verge oif colalspe. Only few passionate people continue to run forums.

 

[Heatman]

let's be realistic, as a forum owner, we cannot compete with discord or reddit. Even though the history of online foirums is older than the social media platform, social media platforms took the world by storm, where as online communities are on the verge oif colalspe. Only few passionate people continue to run forums.

Seriously, it's very good to be true to ourselves and not over reach with the kind of expectations we put on our forums today because there's no way I see it possible for forums to compete with social media platforms today. The gap social media platforms have given to forums is unimaginable.

 

[linux.poet1]

The niche that current forums occupy is the area of high-quality writing, content, and respectability. Reddit is a huge, massive platform and the content moderation is terrible. It is filled with low quality content, memes, and misleading information. Discord has a similar problem - the ease of being on that platform means that servers frequently have the same quality of information. The tone is revoltingly casual on both platforms. Discord is also an instant messaging platform instead of a forum, and that is what most people primarily use it for.

Smaller communities have better moderation policies and attract less riffraff (people who are incapable of knowing anything and seem to unthinkingly trumpet popular philosophies and lies with no intellectual cultivation). They also allow for deeper connections between people to be built over time, something that social media does not really offer.

 

[Ravenfreak]

It depends on the niche of your forum. Certain communities work better on a forum than a Discord server, if you're offering something unique like guides for video games, a forum will still be the better choice than a Discord server since it's more organized. Even the threads feature on Discord cannot replace forums. I think Reddit is more of a threat than Discord these days.

 

[Heatman]

It depends on the niche of your forum. Certain communities work better on a forum than a Discord server, if you're offering something unique like guides for video games, a forum will still be the better choice than a Discord server since it's more organized. Even the threads feature on Discord cannot replace forums. I think Reddit is more of a threat than Discord these days.

Reddit is well above forums. Forums are chasing up on the progress of Reddit just like it does with social media platforms. Discord plays its own role but I don't really think that it's going to do more harm to forums than what social media platforms and Reddit have perfected already.

 

[Kane]

The only way for the forum to stand out is by developing it into a research site or question-and-answer site. If you publish useful and interesting information and discussion on your forum, people will use it for learning and sharing. This aspect is almost missing on Discord. Reddit provides information because it is a huge community and it is really difficult to sort authentic information from fake information. Forms can take the benefit.