Now I've got your attention this is not my opinion as there are clearly some great forums out there like this one mr admin I'm interested in what people think the direction will be in the future, will we always have forums or will the increasing amount of free more advanced and lets face it better designed web software replace the good old forum.......
Posting threads with titles like that which are misleading to readers is a good way to get yourself banned. Welcome to my ignore list, you've just joined about 200 other tards that have done similar acts of stupidity.
Forum softwares are improving as well to catch up the recent trend. VBulletin got the new vb 4.0 out now, with lot of cool stuffs.
The only way to find out, ethanh, is to give a call to the biggest run boards out there. I am sure they are always working on new things to outdo one another.
forums are not anywhere close to disappear. they fulfill a communication need; like the blog, twitter, regular website, videos, each is a different communication channel with its own feature; forums enable a crowd to talk in a time-sorted order, which by the way cannot happen normally (without overlap).
Forums will always be around. They provide a means for asking and answering questions in a quick simple manner. I just hope the popular forums don't continue the trend of loading their pages with ads. Makes it difficult to read.
I agree with the above comments, posting misleading titles is a great way to get banned and ignored. You only make forums worse by posting this. I suggest you fix your title if you really want the community to give you positive feedback.
Don't like the title, but to answer your questions, forums on the internet are far from dead and replaced. If anything, they are growing in popularity. It will be quite a while before some "new technology" comes along and replaces the "good ol' forum".
As mentioned, forums have been around since the Roman times and adopted to the internet now. A open space for people to contribute one at a time publically is one of the better uses of the internet and has a very long future.
Come on! this guy was just looking for some attention! anywayz in reality forums can never fade, the importance SEO wise may increase or decrease, but the there are 20-30 % real users/members in a good forum, they dont stay there coz they want links from them only. Real and serious users take part in forums coz either hey want to learn or share
I agree with the second poster, doing acts such as this will get you banned relatively fast. As for the forum I can only see it going up in the near future, because as long as people are interested in SEO or even making templates this forum will strive.