[Foxx]

I was thinking of a possible way to get a large forum in a short amount of time. Using a hyped movie, video game, product, etc.

For example, say The Dark Knight hadn't come out yet. People were probably doing a lot of Google searches for it I would assume. If you registered something like DarkKnightForum.com there'd be a pretty good chance of people finding the forum without you even doing anything.

If you actually take care of the forum and do everything you would for a normal forum and make it grow it should boost up pretty fast, I'd say 100,000 posts in just a few months. Eventually the movie is going to get outdated, though, right? I don't think you can have a forum about a movie forever. How many people do you think will be joining that forum in two years from now?

So, after you've built a solid community using the hype from the movie and you've gotten to know your members (and the interest in the movie is toning down), you can switch the niché of your forum. Changing it to a general chat forum or something not so specific would probably work the best, but I guess you could do whatever kind of forum you want and hope the members will be interested in that topic.

Now you'll have a forum about something you really love that is already decently large. I don't know how well this all would work but it seems interesting.

I got the idea, by the way, from Cloverfield Movie Forum. That forum has grown to be quite large over the past 8 months or so. If the owner were to switch the topic now he could probably have a decent forum about something a little more permeant.

[lafsunlmtd]

i guess you gotta have the forethought to know which movies will be major blockbusters. Also you gotta be able to really sense what the community will want to follow as far as changing the niche. Its a gamble, but it might work

[Sir TVDinner]

It is funny this thread is here considering the domain names I purchased this morning.
A perfect example to what you describe would be the upcoming huge Watchmen movie due out summer 2009, which is getting huge hype. It is the big Preview showing before The Dark Knight Batman movie currently out.
WATCHMEN MOVIE
Watchmen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Watching Watchmen at Comic-Con - TIME - at this weeks big Comic-Con convention.
Now there is already a massive cult community for this film and comic series, but you would have almost a year lead up if you got it rolling now. And since there is already a preexisting community of fans you might have it rolling even after. AND if there was a sequel years later you could keep it going.

This morning I bought www.watchmenforum.com and www.watchmenforums.com and www.watchmenmovieforum.com
I am not sure what I am going to do with either of them (sell them, develop the sites, etc), but I was thinking the same thing you were. Looking ahead, finding a movie that should be big and jumping in early if possible. I would even be interested in partnering with someone on a project like this.

[Foxx]

Wow, that is a coincidence, indeed.

And you managed to get the best possible domains for this, too. I definitely think you could pull off what the Cloverfield forum did.

[Moelman]

This is definitely a good way to get a good start. The larger the hype the product has (or whatever, in this case a movie), the more people are going to be searching for it and finding your forum.