You will be forgiven for thinking that online forums have been in existence since the beginning of time. In the past, people used to rely on traditional communication methods such as sending mails. This was a huge inconvenience especially when conveying urgent messages, as there were limited ways of ensuring that the mail get to the recipient in good time.
Here are facts to help you understand where the forums came from.
Technology Changes
In the late 1990, some of the revolutionary innovators came up with new communication gadgets, mobile phones, that allowed people to talk from anywhere in the world. This in turn gave birth to mobile apps that one would download and use to send the same messages that was been sent via mail. Forget the new apps, the traditional ones did not even have a feature of posting images, only text.
Internet
In 2000, a group of internet engineers developed the first online forums. It was purchased by companies from all across the globe to help them communicate with their personnel. Initially, they were used as a communication platform within the companies. It was not until 2005, that the same companies realized that they could use the platform to disseminate information to their clients. Nowadays, it is possible to interact with customer care representatives of most companies in real time by joining their respective forums.
Finally, the cost of running an online forum is pretty if you consider the benefits one gets after using it. That is the brief history of the online forums you come across today.