IMO, a lot of it comes from the vision behind Faecebook. Zuckerberg won Time's man of the year for 2010 and there was a big piece about him in there.
Summarising horribly, he wants Farcebook to be an extension of our real lives, a way that we can communicate with our real friends, a garden fence that has room for hundreds of millions of people to lean on whilst chatting, which is open for everyone to see what videos we like, what news items we like, what products we like.
Internet forums have historically been places where people go to either make acquaintances or where we can act a different life to our daily reality.
I don't come here to find out what others had for breakfast or where they checked in - although there is a certain amount of that and I'm not decrying it, having certainly posted stuff like that myself - I come here to find out about new experiences.
I don't know anyone, for instance, who cycle-commutes so I wouldn't learn any of the stuff that I've got from CC through my friends on Facebook.
And I don't want many of my family, friends (although I have a couple of real-life friends who post or read here) or colleagues to read the stuff I put on here because none of them "get" cycling. They think I'm weird enough for riding 3 miles to Tescos or 10 miles to work, what would they do if they found out I'd participated in a helmet discussion?
Or an Oil Thread on a motorbike site?
Facebook serves a purpose and it does so very well. CC serves a purpose, which it also does very well.
The purposes of FB and CC are not the same and, IMO, they converge in only a few areas.
As an analogy, I have friends who I phone and friends who I text. There's people with whom I'll exchange a couple of text messages a day, but I haven't spoken with them in years. There are others who I speak to, and see, frequently but I'd never send them a text.
