There is nothing you can not do in a forum, that you can do any other site. Usually when joining a forum you will have the opportunity to be part of a community based on similar interests.

Sites such as Adobe, Sitepoint, Digital Point are among some of the best and most active forums in the world and other forums such as Deviantart and Hymoo.com are of some of the most unique and fastest growing forums in the world.

Still until this day most leading sites have a forum as one of their categories to allow users to communicate what is on their mind instantly. It allows users to either ask questions or answer questions that one may relate to regarding past experience and any reviews, critic or positive point of views.

Really a forum is based on freedom of speech. Having said that their are usually rules one would also expect to follow, as long as you abide by these you may be a community member for a long time. An experienced forum member may have better reputation then others based on the level of input he has given to others and how satisfied other users have been as a result of the users efforts.

It works well in 3 ways:

1. The website owner itself - by having a community of members on your website attracts new visitors leading them back to your site for other services.

2. The member of the forum - by being part of a thriving website community forum will allow you to gain exposure or recognition from your efforts thus leading you to gain more clicks to your own site or contacting you for services.

3. Recently active forum users have been using platforms such as Hymoo to allow them to add their own forum easily and effectively without having to create their own forum website.

By now having more choice and more social impact with forum capabilities, this gives a very big reason to accept that forums are still really one of the leading website technologies around and will continue to be a very valuable social marketing tool for a very long time to come.