I am very interested in all kinds of histories, from the very long-range (the origins of the Indo-Europeans) to the very short-range (the histories of forum-sites). I have tasked myself with an occupation of the utmost importance: to write a history of City-Data Forums.
Okay, enough with the corniness. Anyway, I have been here since September 2006, but had browsed the forums almost since their inception. "Back then", the appearance was slightly different, and all there were were forums for states, a General U.S. forum, and perhaps a few general forums. It was mostly oriented towards people who were relocating.
City-Data itself, a website that aggregates statistical data from the Census and other sources, existed since at least 2003. The first time Internet Archive crawled the page was September 23, 2003. See
http://web.archive.org/web/200309231...city-data.com/ for an early grab of the site. As you can see, it does not look much different from the current City-Data.com . Not many sites can say they haven't changed much over 8-9 years!
City-Data Forums first appears in Internet Archives on December 30, 2005. The link is here:
http://web.archive.org/web/200512300...data.com/forum . It is evident that it was just starting out. The site had a slightly different appearance, which didn't stay for long. The original forums consisted of all of the state forums, General U.S., and "Other Topics". To say it a different way, THIS is one of the original forums!
Less than a month later, the site boasted of 258 threads, 510 posts, and 471 members. The most popular forums were Tennessee (23 threads) and North Carolina (17 threads). The forum count (from the front page) remained the same. (
http://web.archive.org/web/200601262...ata.com/forum/ )
Fast-forward to late April 2006, and the site certainly was growing. In just three months, the membership total escalated from 471 to 4,096, and the thread count from 258 to 2,118. A "People Search" forum was added. (
http://web.archive.org/web/200604271...ata.com/forum/ ) .
By Christmas Eve of 2006, the site had not expanded much, but since late April 2006, its membership had grown by nearly 800% to over 37,000 members and its post count by more than 900% to more than 215,000 posts. Other than possibly adding regional sub-forums, the only forum that was added was "Classified Ads".
The early forums appeared to mainly cater to those seeking information about relocating, as is apparent from the thread titles. I reckon that there were few people who actually stayed on the forum. Those relocating are still very much served by the forum, but it appears that it is much more of an area-specific "chat" forum today, with members sticking around for several years and discussing topics of local as well as general interest (more on that later).
It was in February 2007 when the first round of new forums were added. These were "Canada", "Mexico", "World", "Books, Movies, Music, TV" (one forum), "House", "Garden", "Real Estate Brokers", and "Health and Wellness". The closest crawl of the site to the addition of these new forums was on March 14th, 2007. It is evident that City-Data was growing very rapidly then. The number of members had nearly doubled in only 2.5 months from about 37,000 to more than 64,000.
By the end of 2007, City-Data Forums began to take on its present form. Numerous new general forums (too many to mention here; check
http://web.archive.org/web/200712141...ata.com/forum/ ) had been created by the end of the year. The growth remained rapid; in nine months, the membership had more than tripled to 216,000.
It was through the addition of the "general" forums that City-Data gained a staying power with members. The character of the forums changed from a people-finding and relocation tips service to more of a general chat forum, and not only in the "general" forums. The state and city forums began to transform into the role that USENET newsgroups like "mn.general" or "alabama.birmingham" or "soc.culture.alaska" once played: a general chat forum for local topics.
In 2008, City-Data added blogs and "social groups", which members could join, as well as advanced user profile features such as "visitor messages" and pictures.
By the end of that year, City-Data had 472,254 members, 440,340 threads, and 6,356,413 posts; by December 2009, it had 765,256 members, and 737,575 threads containing 11,787,299 posts. The North Carolina forum was still the most active forum (as it had been since at least April 2006), with 54,711 threads.
Currently, as of February 26, 2012, the site boasts of 1,311,939 threads containing 22,231,856 posts and 1,335,614 members. The 1,335,614 members probably makes it one of the web's largest forums sites. By comparison, some very large forums sites that I visit have 587,406 members, 52,079 members (3,413 of them active), 495,388 members (75,989 of them active), and 304,437 members (7,842 of them active).
One thing that is also readily apparent as the site's statistics are examined is an increase in the post:thread ratio. From approximately 2 in April 2006, it jumped to 8 at the end of 2006, 12 at the end of 2007, 16 at the end of 2009, and about 17 as of present. This is probably due to the presence of "mega-threads" in the general forums, which usually don't require much out of the poster. Such threads include the following:
https://www.city-data.com/forum/music...right-now.html (2,047 posts)
https://www.city-data.com/forum/food-...-now-part.html (9,046 posts)
https://www.city-data.com/forum/weath...-part-2-a.html (16,947 posts)
So, that's my story of City-Data.com; from humble beginnings as a site primarily used by those relocating, it exploded into what is certainly one of the internet's large forum sites, serving every purpose for everybody.
(This took over two hours to write!)
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