I was at a seminar a couple of weeks ago, not about forums but rather Planned Giving and estates. From a Charity view point.
One thing that was pointed out, many went to facebook, and I think we all saw that happen to our forums, but people are coming back to 'like minded forums" I certainly have seen an upswing in traffic on my forum.
It will be nice when folks can do easy registration by importing their info from facebook. I have that option on one of my webdating sites.. and it just makes the process so much easier.
My ads on facebook are so much cheaper and effective then my google ads have been.
I would really recommend to all, to use mindraven for your host. My expenses, and more over my problem dropped to a fraction of what I had before..
At the minimum package, one should be able to get enough adsense income to make any forum fly. be sure to put links on facebook with like minded people.
