The Life & Death of Golf Forums
Entry posted by bkuehn1952
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Many people start golf blogs or forums with good intentions of maintaining the site for an infinite period of time. The sad truth is most rarely make it for more than a year or two.
I first became acquainted with the idea of a golf blog/forum when a site called “Last Minute Golfer (LMG)” existed. Really, the forum was just an afterthought. The main reason for LMG was to sell spots 24-48 hours prior to the tee time. They must have done reasonably well because eventually GolfNow swallowed them up.
While LMG was rolling, they had forums for each part of the country in which they operated. I discovered the Michigan forum one day and was excited to have an outlet to discuss golf. Sadly, the rest of the LMG-Michigan users rarely engaged in this forum so there was not much discussion taking place. The Atlanta area forum, however, was quite active. I enjoyed reading what our southern golf brothers had to say and would occasionally participate. It was the first time I encountered an internet “troll.” At the time, I did not understand the process and just marveled at one particular poster’s ability to get all the Atlantans really worked up. He adopted the role of a well-heeled, educated northerner who had transplanted to Atlanta. He would constantly irritate the other posters with subtle and sometimes unsubtle jabs at the rest of the forum.
Once GolfNow took possession of the site, they slowly dismantled LMG and I had to find a new outlet for my desire to read about and discuss golf. At that point I stumbled upon Golfblogger. This gentleman has maintained a golf blog for 10+ years. Mainly centered upon Michigan, it was an interesting read but there never was much participation in the forums. I finally stopped trying to create discussions and went in search of another outlet. Fortunately, someone had mentioned “oobgolf.” In that site, I discovered an active forum plus the ability to capture one’s statistics.
Oobgolf had a pretty nice run. The forums were active and everyone maintained stats so one could see each poster’s “game.” In fact, they did so well that SkyGolf purchased the site and used it as a model for their own offering. Eventually, SkyGolf killed off oobgolf’s site and we were all faced with another internet forum diaspora.
At this point I have become a golf forum vagabond. My participation in forums extends to several sites along with a mostly private site run by a former forum participant at oobgolf. With golf websites having such a high casualty rate, one can’t afford to get tied down to one place.
So what is everyone else’s story?
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