Is there such a thing? Is there a certain amount of time most forums last before they roll over and die? Either from lack of activity or lack of time/money/interest on the owner's part?

Been thinking about this lately. I was a member of a forum that closed a few years back. They had nearly 12,000 members, a TON of activity and the owner was a published writer that was rolling in dough.

And yet when her company pulled out their monetary support for the forum, she closed it. Either she didn't have the knowledge to set one up herself at the time or didn't have the desire to put forth her own money into the forum. Either way, everyone was shocked, no one saw it coming.

That forum was open for four years. There's just no telling which ones will stick and which won't.

I've been part of a few othe forums that also closed after three to four years. This seemes to be a running theme and I was wondering if anyone else sees an 'average lifespan' of sorts for most forums?

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Hi there

This is an interesting question - I can only answer it from my point of view I suppose, but I'd have to say (at NFHiB), we're going into our 5th Year and are going stronger than ever now.

I suppose forums close/dwindle/shut down for a no. of reasons - one is the problem you mentioned - funding. It's a vicious circle sometimes, the more successful you are = more resources it takes to run (financially for hosting/bandwidth and the human resources needed, e.g. Moderators, Admin, etc).

The key is to keep fresh - introduce new things (look, design, content) and keep potential members, new and existing members as happy & fulfilled as possible, but always keep your forum consistently of a high quality.

On balance, I think I would have to say no there isn't an 'average lifetime' of a forum - I would say anything past the first year or so and a forum has an increased chance of long-term success.

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With all the forums that pop up every day and go nowhere, I'll bet that the average is less than 6 months.

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Having a forum is like opening your own restaurant. 90% of restaurants fail in their first year, that leaves 10% who survive. But amongst those 10% I'm sure a portion of those still fail in their second year.

I've been with many, MANY forums for at least 3-4 years now. Enough to know that at any moment a forum can just pack up and leave. Hell, only a few weeks ago an active gaming forum with about 130,000 posts closed down. Why? Just because and that was that.

Take a look at the forums around you. Heck, just google a few forums. How many of those forums are actually active. And when I mean active I mean at least a few people online posting. Or people don't even have to be online, but at least getting a certain amount of posts compared to their member and post count.

There is a list of forums two years back that I joined. I had forgotten about these forums but in my luck I had written them on a list I found only a few days ago. Revisiting these forums they are either dead, inactive, or on the verge of dying. And these aren't your everday forums, I mean these forums were active when I used to be there. Numerous users online. Some of these forums even had over a million posts. With over a hundred or three hundred users online at the same point. And one year later? These forums have only seven or eight users online just lurking around. I'm for real here and I'm not joking. These were the forums that had even inspired me to start a forum, these were the forums I thought would never die. Huge forums and only a while later they are on the verge of dying?

I think what most people don't understand is that opening a forum isn't just a piece of cake. Like I said before, Google a few forums and you will see that there are 50 times more inactive forums compared to active ones. People think to themselves. Oh well this guy opened a forum and got a million posts. Why can't I do the same? Then only a few days later their forum is dead.

Achieving an actual good forum is becomming more and more uncommon. Now if anyone notices many new forums are emerging and forums are popping out like popcorn. The competition becomes tougher and chances are YOUR forum WILL NOT succeed. Having an active forum is like winning the lottery, and what are the chances of that? When you open your forums you are competing against the hundreds and thousands of other forums that are already out there.

But to answer your question, there is no average lifespan for a forum. Since most forums just stay open forever and dead. Even on AdminFusion there are dead sites just floating around. I think your question should be changed more to what are the chances of a forum succeeding?

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Sorcerer - excellent post. The moral of this is, never, ever, ever, take your members for granted. Without them, there is no forum.

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The most successful forum I was ever a part of was Timesplitters3.net. (I modded there) It was an independent fan based forum for the game launched well in advance to release, where you could get news and updates. Well, the game developers (Free Radical Design) mentioned they have been taking suggestions from our site in an interview, and we got hit so hard and so fast with new people, it literally burst at the seams. The administrators at the time where tragically unexperienced, and couldn't handle the madness, and soon after the game came out, they just pulled the plug and walked away.

Success isn't always good for forums

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I use to visit my members' sites from time to time. MAny of them are no longer there, or closed. And my site is just 2 years old and some of the sites/forums seemed more developed than mine ... Well I think it's something like 1 year or less when most of the forums die if the admin doesn't have the willingness to work more on them. I am facing activity issues myself, but I won't close any of them.

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Well, if we are talking about the average lifespan of EVERY FORUM, and averaging them all, its probably somewhere between 3-9 months, as everyday little forums pop up, and often a few month later they are gone.

However, if we are talking about forums professionally made, such as the ones owned by members of this forum, its probably reaching up for 4-6 years. Possibly more for some.

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I think theres a life span for every forum, but my brother talks about if you can't carry the forum on pass it down to someone responsible who can carry on with the forum etc. So it keeps getting handed on until it finds into someones hands who knows what they're doing.

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You know, I came in here and I was going to post a nice, long post on how the average age of a forum is actually much lower than you might expect, but there's no way for me to explain it better than Sorcerer did (great post).

The vast majority of forums fail within the first 3-6 months...many even within the first couple weeks. If you eliminate all of these spur of the moment, unplanned forums, then the average age for a forum is probably going to be 1 or 2 years, but if you include these forums, the average age could be as low as 3 months...but who is to determine what forums are to be included in this average and what forums are not to be included?

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