Forums - What does the future hold?

Well, I'm sure everyone here is pretty familiar with how the forum communities work.

What I am wondering is where do forums stand in the next few years with all the social media sites and networks taking over. There are a lot of BIG forum communities out there that are established and thriving, and probably will be around for years and years to come. Thats not what I'm looking into here.

Most people know it takes quite some time to get a good solid forum going to a point where it's self sustaining, sometimes years. Also the profit from ads aren't always the best do to the type of people and ad blindness from the way forums work.

You always see it here, follow your passion. Well the only reason I ever found out a normal person could even build his or hers own website on the internet is because of these types of communities. (years and years and decades ago, seems like anyways) It ultimately led me here.

I was apart of putting up a forum recently but in a very small niche, and it's success was do to the other partner already having his feet into that market and relationships with some of the big players. So with a couple blog post and a fb post the forum had a couple hundred (I know its not a lot) members sign up withing about 30 days or so. But a quarter of those were very dedicated, and motivated members which helped a lot.

Anyways, before I drift off subject. I want to get some-kind of forum up and going and just wanted to know what ppl here thought of the long term success of forums were these days. Seeing that the niche or market I will be going into probably wont be as unique and tight knit as the last one.

I'm not even going into this looking to make money, the only short term goal I have for it now is to be able to sustain a revenue as to where it wont be out of pocket once the year domain and hosting is up. So basically I have a year to make around $150 a year. And also to have a good, friendly user base that is active.

I just wasnt sure if the new ppl coming on the internet these days are forum savvy or just FB and twiiter addicted.

Thoughts appreciated