The concept of internet forums has mostly been gathering dust for the past ten years while the ways people discuss over the internet have changed profoundly, so some re-imagining is definitely in order.
IMHO pivory is hideous (different strokes) and still feels too bound by trying to simply make old forums "cool". Seems that commenting and forums line really should be more blurred. I know some people really like pivory but I'm not sure it's really a contendor for a serious forum replacement for a real site. At least in my view.
branch on the other hand is really quite unique. I think however it's more of a commenting platform or something for closed discussions, maybe for some kind of collaborative solution even.. rather than a forum replacement.
branch is definitely a good one but it's really a different product and market. it's not forums and not really a commenting system for your site also.
and we don't take pivory very seriously
- forums can be embedded on our site with just a few lines of HTML and it works out of the box
- because it's a true integration with WebSockets and CORS technologies you have complete CSS and JavaScript control
- Moot includes commenting that is as easy to embed as forums
- The real-time aspect on Moot is not just an "cool add on", but the app is completely real time from top to bottom. All operations happen in place and everyone get's notified instantly.
- "My Feed" or "All posts" are simple concepts but you cannot see them elsewhere. Traditional forums are list of links that point to another list of links and you end up clicking and sufring a lot.
Maybe you want to try out search
http://flowplayer.org/forum/#!/search/welcome
To get sense of the speed too.