Is Neoseeker losing popularity?

A lot of users have joined Neoseeker, but the users who have just joined don't really care about posting, and thus they are still Neo-newbies. The most posts are coming from users over 1000 posts. Does this mean Neoseeker's activity is faltering and thus Neo is losing popularity?

I just had to say this. Yes.

It's certainly boring to see that no one has replied to a thread you made. I ultimately joined NS because it's got cheats, reviews and all the gaming good stuff.

So yeah, I might think that NS is indeed losing popularity.

If you take a look around the other popular internet forums you can see that they are all down in activity. Forums used to be all that but now it's all about FaceBook and the like. Neoseeker has been keeping up pretty well recently in integrating FaceBook and Twitter and if they continue on with these efforts hopefully Neoseeker can find a successful middle ground.

It's obvious to say that forums discussing old games like Pokemon Yellow have definitely gone down because of the newer games.

quote castlewars

It's obvious to say that forums discussing old games like Pokemon Yellow have definitely gone down because of the newer games.

True.

It seems that General forums that span a whole series of games in the same series tend to to better in terms of activity, considering many of the General forums were created at least 5-7 years ago, and most of those series are still running today. I.E General Mario Brothers forum.

With the community we have, Neoseeker will be here for a very long time. It will outlive a lot of the more well known forums/game sites, I really do believe that.

quote Hearts

Back in the day of Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, forums had lots of activity. No vivid change in the generation shift from 3 to 4. Finally, the current generation shift from 4 to 5. The Black and White forums had decent activity for a rather short time. Of course, Pokemon Diamond clans still had activity after the generation shift.

That probably has more to do with the style-shift of Pokémon though, not just with it being newer, though that is possibly also a contributing factor. Generation four also greatly benefitted from HeartGold and SoulSilver, which pleased a lot of old-time fans of the series and made them increase their activity.

The reason why forums are in general on a decline though, is manifold. It's a whole complex matter, but back when Neo began, a forum was often the quickest way to find something out about a game. Right now Wiki's frequently have all the info you need, and in greater detail than you would get in the forums. Furthermore, many people used to congregate on major forums like Neoseeker to help each other out with technical issues, which was much faster than going through a company's technical support, especially for known issues. Now, pretty much every gaming company has their own forum for those purposes and others.

For more generalised topics, twitter and facebook and the like are now important outlets, especially because there you can actually discuss it with people you trust, rather than having to rely on complete strangers. This is detrimental for some forum topic, but others remain unaffected.

Of course, a stronger division in communities in Neoseeker itself also contributes somewhat to this issue. Loungin' and the Oldies Lounge both suffer from no longer being united, in my humble opinion, and having a big diverse forum about a certain topic to wade around in is usually more interesting than small very specific ones. But again, that's my personal opinion.