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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morrus" data-source="post: 6312424" data-attributes="member: 1">The essential difference between social networks and forums - and Google or Facebook could do this in a heartbeat, and probably will at some point, which is when places like this will go away forever - is archive-ability.  You can't stumble across a Facebook conversation from a week ago and contribute to it, let along a month or a year ago.  G+ is a little more archivey in that Google's search index features a G+ post linking to an article higher than the actual article, assuming it is set to be public. Twitter is pretty much what folks are saying right this second, like a giant worldwide chatroom.So a conversation on Twitter, G+, or FB is about "now" - what folks are talking about right this second. It gets high immediate response rates (and folks replying are where most of us get our online fuel), but those are limited to those that look at it right then, and overall views are lower.  It's gone in a day or two, never to be seen again - but it's a quicker immediate fix. Folks won't stumble across it on Google in a year's time (well, G+ maybe, but Google pretty much controls the web these days). A forum conversation can go in-depth and last much longer, and be accessible forever.  A forum doubles as an information archive.  How many times have you searched for info, and the answer has been a forum thread on whatever game, electronic device, washing machine, skincare product, or what-have-you?  Lots and lots, I'll wager. This will all change, of course.  Web pages as we know them won't be around in ten years.  Forums won't be, either.  Or rather, forum software will evolve to integrate social networks as much as those corporations will allow it to.  Forum topics these days are fairly easily shareable on the social networks, and that will become easier, automated, and more integrated.  Eventually, they'll be hard to separate.To tie that into the current discussion - WotC's behaviour follows these trends exactly, and I'm sure every corporation on the planet does exactly the same.  We're all customers of Twitter, FB, and Google these days, whether we want to be or not.  Sure, those specific networks might not be around forever (Hi MySpace!) but that's the future model.Reading that, you probably ask: why not just have a FB page or G+ group than a site and forum?  The answer is that those spaces are rented; you don't own your group or page - the big corporations do. If Google decides to close G+ or FB changes the way a Facebook page works (as they frequently have done) you have no control over that.</blockquote>

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