DPG Media won’t take 22-year-old Viva Forum offline after all

The Viva Forum, which belongs to the magazine of the same name, will nevertheless remain online. A Viva community manager says that the response to the decision to close was ‘enormous’ and that owner DPG Media has decided to ‘ensure the continued existence of the forum’.

Originally, the forum was supposed to go offline on August 2 of this year. The last edition of the accompanying magazine will also be released on 20 July this year. The magazine dates from 1972 and the forum was founded in 1999. Today the forum has 2.8 million users and countless topics. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek had already started archiving the site, while that was still possible.

The news of the closure of the Viva forum was not seen as positive. Many see the site as ‘cultural heritage’ due to the many posts made over the years. For example, reactions from just after 9/11 and the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh can be found, Trouw notes in an extensive story about the forum. The newspaper was one of the first to come out with the news.

“Since Viva is ending as a brand, we will work out in the coming period how best to do this,” continues the community manager. Perhaps the forum will be renamed.