Generally speaking, a server environment is not the right place to run bleeding edge software. Debian's conservatism is quite sensible when it comes to production server environments, and traditionally (before the whole systemd debacle) they were pretty good at prioritizing stability over the feature of the week demanded by more desktop-centric folks. There's Ubuntu and other derivatives that can cater to their specific needs without compromising the integrity of the distribution in general. And if you have a specific application that requires a more recent version, you can always make use of a 3rd party repository (that you'd of course have carefully vetted first), a binary package, or just rolling your own from source. It makes much more sense to take those extra steps for specific applications than take a blanket approach to rolling out new code all over your production environment.
Could you please explain this reasoning:
> Being "heard of more often" translates into the most up-to-date package manager
Support -- have you compared the length of support for Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS releases? Did you conclude that Ubuntu has long-term support and Debian does not?
Can you also explain what you mean by:
> [Ubuntu has] wider software compatibility than any other distro
But we see this a lot - people jump onto Ubuntu despite not having an interest in running Unity, Mir, upstart, etc, or having a slightly fancier installer, or different schedule on release of stable / long term support versions.
I suspect it's simply that for many people unfamiliar with the various GNU/Linux distros, Ubuntu is the one they've heard of more often. And while most people marvel at the sophisticated package management system, few ponder why the package files don't have a .ubu suffix.