Sometimes a poster will post something I totally agree on and have to pause to remind myself there's no "Like" button on message boards.
You could have friends on the board just like you have friends in Facebook so every time one of your friends posts a message it appears in your timeline.
When someone replies to a thread you start you are notified like in Facebook.
If you are posting something in a thread you type in the first few letters of a posters name and it auto-fills. When that poster accesses the message board there's a notification that they've been referenced.