An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.
[1] They are an element of social media technologies which take on many different forms including blogs, business networks, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, products/services review, social bookmarking, social gaming, social networks, video sharing and virtual worlds.
[2] Forums act as centralized locations for topical discussion.
The Forum format is derived from BBS and Usenet.
[3] This is a list of the most notable and significant Internet forums communities that have converged around topics ranging from medicine to technology, and vocations and hobbies.