Internet Blogs VS Online Communities and Forums

I have been using the Internet for around 6 or 7 years now and I find it interesting how certain things change with time. One of those things that is beginning to change is the way people share information online.

Online Forums

Back 6 or 7 years ago the new and cool thing to do was become a part of a certain Internet community and post in online discussion forums. Being a web developer I naturally became part of a number of web communities to learn from and use as an aid for developing my skills.

The most helpful part about online forums is how they enable others to share their opinions and expertise no matter what their skill level. Forums allow beginners to post questions and learn new things in a certain interest while it allows advanced people to share their knowledge and expertise.

However, with time you start to see more and more of the same thing happening over and over again and after a while a lot of the value of an online forum is lost. People argue a lot, there are always different opinions, people who are not experts think they are, false information gets thrown around and tons of other things like this go on. Because of all this chaos that can be created online it tends to scare away the professionals, plus they are usually busy anyway and don't have time to help others unfortunately.

I have seen it happen time and time again. The top dogs of the forum will eventually grow to a level where they do not benefit as they once did helping others with the specific topic. They essentially "outgrow" a forum just as a child outgrows his clothes. So where then, do we find these experts once they move on past forums?

Welcome to the Blogosphere

The experts in their fields usually will move onto blogging. A blog is essentially an encyclopedia of somebody's opinions and knowledge. It allows professionals to collect their thoughts and share valuable information to web visitors. The reason why most people eventually turn to blogging is because it allows them to create their own asset and brand themselves, rather than having to build somebody else's asset and brand somebody else.

Blogs usually offer higher quality information than forums because it takes longer to set up a blog and it is a much more serious venture. Because of this, blogs usually have longer, higher quality posts that have had much more thought in a topic. Forums usually offer a small blurb and then a bunch of "me too" posts.

In Summary

For any questions you may have about a topic I would recommend posting it on a forum of your interest as these forums are generally very helpful at answering questions you may have.

As far as learning goes, I would highly recommend subscribing to blogs that cover topics in your areas of interest. Rather than having to order new books or search for new topics, with blogs you can easily have all the content delivered right to your browser. This form of hyper-learning is especially useful for quickly sorting through content that is of interest to you.

Blogs and forums do overlap in areas a little bit, but as a whole forums are much more community driven while blogs are more information driven.