Do you think someone's going to 'disrupt' the paid forum market soon?

As in, make something that completely blows vBulletin/Invision Power Board/XenForo out the water entirely?

Because while I like all three scripts to some degree, they all seem to be doing quite a few things wrong nowadays and I feel that they might end up putting off many older forum owners with their constant obsession with web 2/3.0 and mimicking Facebook. Here's what I think each is doing wrong as of now:

vBulletin: Well, it's on the path to self destruction due to Internet Brands and their poor management, and recent versions have been buggy, pretty poorly designed and coded and losing customers like nothing else. I'm not sure how many years I give them to be honest.

Invision Power Board: Decent enough basic software, but the license scheme and feature changes seem to be designed for businesses first everyone else last. The marketplace is a bit of a joke and barely features any decent free add ons or styles with everyone seemingly trying to charge money for everything. Might not have enough of a community feel for hobbyist forums in general.

XenForo: Seems to be digging its own grave, and hastily sped up by the IB lawsuit. Development slowing down and staff seemingly leaving. Part of me thinks this was probably inevitable, the same issues with not listening to customers, not giving information, long delays in development time and only implementing things the staff wanted were already problems back when Kier and co worked on vBulletin and only got worse without some kind of manager or higher level authority to keep it in check.

And honestly, I don't think any of them really seem poised to be to the forum software market what UBB and vBulletin were in the olden days. IPB was once thought to be the replacement that everyone would use post IB buyout of vB, but quite a few people have just either given up using it or switched to other things afterwards because of how different it is. And XenForo was thought to be like this, but seems to be collapsing under its own weight and the lawsuit.

I think it looks like now might be a good time for a third party to come in and release some soft of forum software that just does what everyone wants it to, looks decent in general and has various things the big three currently don't have. I'm not sure who could do that, but I do think that a decent new script with no connection to any of the current ones that's maybe going back to being just a forum with minor social features could probably revolutionise everything and end up being the next big thing.

What do you think?

 

Nah, I don't think so. If it was too happen, then mybb or SMF is running the show on that one.

 

I don't know, people buy paid software for a reason (like support, guarantee that it'll be updated, more features, etc). But the current paid scripts aren't really fulfilling the needs of as many people at present, and I do think someone could do better.

Then again, maybe someone could easily outdo MyBB/phpBB/SMF as well, there's a lot wrong with forum design as far as UI and usability and accessibility and whatever goes.

 

Actually, I think that was the whole point of vB4/5 pricing style. I think that Internet Brands is trying to 'disrupt' this pricing system that we have now. But this is hurting iB/vBSI. I mean, why would I want to buy a version class just so that I can buy it all over again in the next version class? I was perfectly fine with renewing every year.

 

That's the problem
You'll never be able to make 100% of your customers happy (probably 70% are possible, but then the 30% will start to complain)

Why not use mybb,phpbb, or some of the other alternatives
IMO they are great for beginners (because you stated that e.g. ipb is for business forums.. once your forum is getting bigger and you have income, there's nothing wrong to check for commercial alternatives)
As i have run forums for my business, i also started most of them with mybb...
once i saw that they success and it's worth to invest into them, i moved them to vB

some alternatives:
http://www.phorum.org/
http://punbb.informer.com/
http://esotalk.org/ (it's lacking of features, but my favorite ATM)
http://fluxbb.org/
whatever...
http://www.forummatrix.org/

 

I don't see any disruption happening anytime soon. Ideas are too entrenched -- For instance, the default postbit on most forums is just plain ugly -- why not have a postbit info in the signature area? That'd be a simple start, focus more on the content, and waste less page space.

XenForo looked promising to at least bring forums up-to-date with how younger people expect a site to act -- with lots of AJAX (like Facebook) but XF looks like it's falling by the wayside.

For all you see with vB 5 the beta looks like a big step backwards in terms of navigation. I seen one of the more prominent claims is that you can change the site logo with just a few clicks. Yeah, that's all fine and dandy but how often do you need to change your logo? I've only changed mine to keep in line with a new style.

 

That's another problem

After i talked with several community owners of forums i managed for them, and asked if they want to move to xf, they said that it's tooooooooooo much of web2.0 (too many overlays, popups and too much ajax stuff e.g. how can i visit a user profile? if i click on avatar or username, it shows only the overlay..)

 

I'm one of the people who actually liked that functionality. I can understand how someone coming from vB 3 or 4 wouldn't quite like it but I liked the idea of viewing information in popovers instead of always having to load another page.

 

Yea, i'm a big fan too.
I'm also a big fan of the way how it's implemented in xenforo, because it's very 3rd party developer friendly and you don't need any additional code. (i have to say that it's probably better to create the overlays and alerts via js, instead of ajax requests, but for me as developer it's a much easier way because i don't need to care about this stuff.... i just have to create 1 template and xenforo is able to use it as stand alone html page including the page wrapper (header,menu,footer) or for an overlay

 

Xenforo i doubt its dying really so many forums use it and the cost of it makes it not really going down hill it may not provide great support but people use it and money is being brought in so thats the main part i doubt vb will last long and ipb is just to easy to be hacked.

 

Way to dig up a year old thread!

 

It won't happen, unless the free forum software's step their game up, and make there software just as good as the paid ones.