The reason why 4-ch will never be so popular is because we already have many boards for English-speaking people interested in Japan. There are boards run by media organizations encouraging discussion of news articles. There are Japan-related Usenet groups, there are anime boards. We already have boards for almost every hobby or subject related to Japan. There are blogs.

Also, the 2ch software you are using for this BBS probably has the worse-looking layout and least understandable system. For 1st-time users, it sucks. As someone mentioned above, we are too used to conventional board systems like phpbb, blogs, wikis, and myspace. We understand how it works. But this 2ch software is totally alien to most people. Not very intuitive to use.

This software is uniquely popular only for 2ch. It will never become a popular system in the more logical and design-conscious English-speaking world. This board really looks primitive, like the text-only days before the Internet when we had Compuserve, etc. Finding a thread is too troublesome.

You should have used a better and more modern software like an SNS system such as mixi.

And who wants to come here when you all keep calling each other faggots?