I agree with you on that. It’s like you get the benefits of the Internet, but also the benefits of a single point of use.
Let’s look at a lot of game companies – they have their own forums, but they also have to have facebook et al because they want to have something they totally control but they also want something accessible easily. Imagine if they federated their forums, and suddenly all these little forums have a lot more reach and the people in charge of the projects can control them more than big tech would let them. Win/win/win. And we cut out a middle-man in the process.