i can register a new domain with godaddy, click a couple of buttons to install whatever cms i want, and a few hours later myownpersonaldomain.com is rockin with a full-featured cms or whatever other pre-installed app i wanted.

why can’t these web2.0 firms off that feature instead of the crappysubdomain.someweb20firm.com?

We’ve been informed that Meetro – provider of a location-based instant messaging service – is working on a stealth project that aims to make forum setup, customization, and moderation as easy as blogging with Blogger….

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com

I’m a member of several car forums, all of which are extremely popular. They all focus, for the most part, on a specific make of automobile. I’ve had friends start several forums (which isn’t really very hard), and only the ones that truly took the time to create a completely custom design+template had any success, since for the most part almost every hobby or topic already has a community, and there needs to be something to attract people to a new one.

I really like the Meetro guys, and look forward to the product. However, if this is focusing on support forums, where people don’t need a custom design, most people will already have a place to host it, and would prefer to just use Beast (Rails) or vBulletin. If it’s focusing on solving problems for general discussion boards, I don’t think it will have much of an audience. The problem to solve there isn’t the creation of the board, since that’s going to have to require a lot of effort, but building a community, which inherently requires the forum to offer something unique.

@sputnick (22) vBulletin is “dead simple” and has a great support community. One of my webforums just installed a widget for YouTube video embeds. I wrote a position on vBulletin for TechCrunch a few weeks ago.

http://dweezel.info/

For example, TechCrunch Forums doesn’t even float threads by activity, which makes them totally useless. So even though TechCrunch gets all this traffic, the forums are basically dead because the technology is crap.

I don’t blame TechCrunch, though, I blame the lack of good forum scripts. The reason we haven’t implemented forums at our site is because everything available is so shitty that I’d have to code my own forum engine, which would eat up all of my time for about six weeks.

I hope Meetro and Tangler can take discussion forums to the next level. Forums still constitute the meat and potatoes of the Internet. Social networking is junk food in comparison.

There is also a plenty of innovation in the boardscape if you take a look around – certainly in the forum search field at least..

Forums generate a stronger community.

Forums are a lot of work, work that most everyone to creates them grossly underestimates.

Forums are only really useful in settings where you have a product/service/etc… to discuss, or you have a particular conversation worthy topic.

Dead Forums are the saddest thing in the world.

Meetro sounds very similar to Tangler made less interesting. Does that mean it’s bad? No, it just means there isn’t much new to see here. The reason that Forums (SomethingAwful, Sitepoint etc…) still exist is because they are the rare occasions that all the rules of proper Forum development were followed.

My thoughts? I certainly hope they are offering a little more than a Forum white label.