Difference between a forum and social media

When I started this site I quickly found other forum owners who were busy bemoaning the likes of Facebook and Google+ as being the death of online forums, essentially taking over from them. I found this laughable and a false idea, and I would like to explain why..

Internet forums are still (for the most part) small niche groups where people share information and news surrounding a particular interest. So whether that be Anglo/Filipino relationships, Football, World of Warcraft or whatever - there is a niche forum out there for exactly that. Now, there are groups and pages on Facebook dedicated to all sorts of niches, but try searching for them in Google or Bing and you find zilch. that's right, nothing, as Facebook is a closed system that limits search engines within it's network. So, for people looking for help on anything that requires them asking questions, Facebook is off limits for that one reason. The other reason is that Facebook is more personal, people have their entire families on Facebook, limiting what they would want shared with people they know in the real world.

Forums, on the other hand offer a degree of anonymity that Facebook and other social media do not. They are also indexed and listed by Google and other search engines so that people out there looking for help will at some point find it in a forum. Also, with forums there is the freedom to invest as much or as little time to the website in question as you would like. You won't get a text from a friend advising you that you never replied to their chess game challenge on a forum that you might with Facebook (unless you and a friend are in the same Chess forum).