Maybe, as the Mac OS improved, people had fewer problems.
I thought about that, and I think it's true to a certain extent, but in that case, the
76,401 discussions in the
Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard community on Apple's support site suggest that there's little correlation between OS maturity and folks' need/desire to discuss it.
(After all, the flawless performance of OS X on your Macs hasn't kept you from participating in a thread or two here and there.
)
Instant links to discussions of similar problems pop up, as opposed to waiting for someone reply to a post on a tech forum.
Of course, if everyone googled for instant links and no one posted, there'd ultimately be no discussions of similar or indeed any problems at all. (Obviously there are other potential sources of search results, like online articles and blog posts, but neither of those is crowd-sourced and thus offer comparative experiences which are much more limited in scope.)
I use Facebook mostly to keep in touch with friends I don't get a chance to see as often as I'd like, but I honestly can't think of a single instance in which Facebook has figured in the process by which I've arrived at a solution to a problem.
As for Twitter, I think that's a bit like texting, in that you either do it or you don't. I don't, and I don't know too many folks who do, and that's a commentary on my position in the demographic firmament, but it leads to this point, which I haven't seen raised: historically, members of this (MFIF/FTM) community have been older, on average, than those of most other Mac sites I've visited.
I agree with Jerry when he says, "I don't think Twitter/Facebook is the solution, unless the prime movers here are committed Twits/Facebookers." And I don't think they are.
