Searching Message Boards and Forums, Two Specialty Databases Can Help
Over the years, we’ve written about two excellent specialty databases to search discussion boards, forums, and related groups. However, (oops) we failed to mention that a few months ago, one of these sites launched a public beta with of their service.
These days lots of people forget that message board and forums (aka “old school” for many), often focused on a specific topic, remain excellent places to go to find information, views and opinions, experts, etc. Unlike, other types of online groups, some are well maintained and even moderated. The two sites we’ve written about are:
+ BoardReader, also now offers image search as well as forum and discussion group search.
+ BoardTracker, and their recently released public beta of BoardTracker Version 2.
Both dbases track tens of thousands of boards and forums and some allow a bit of personalization and tracking.
Also, both dbases have extensive archives of posts.
No database is perfect but when looking for people or comments, often from experts, message boards can still be of value.
BoardTracker Features
+ Directory of over 32,000 forums
+ My Threads (Registration Required)
+ Alerts (Registration Required)
+ Keyword search by word or by tags
+ Wildcard Searching
+ Author Search
+ Graphs
+ Tag Cloud
BoardReader Features
+ Image Search
+ Forum Search
+ Advanced Interface
+ Press Releases with Trends Graphical View
+ Backlinks to posts
+ Discussion Search
So, when looking to find out what people are talking about, you might want to stretch beyond the blogosphere and look to message boards and forums.