Essentially for free is not “for free”. For example, the best way many people have to communicate with their peers is Facebook. But A) their peers aren’t the ones seeding the discussions, and B) their communication is filtered for signals like “vitality”. More mundane, but important ideas, are a bit squashed on a platform like that.

Picking on Facebook because they’re the biggest, but Twitter appears to be worse on every axis, as it continues to evolve to favor clout.