Another angle on this is the economic models. Physical social spaces are generally social as a side effect -- it's not how they make money. People go to a resta

Another angle on this is the economic models. Physical social spaces are generally social as a side effect -- it's not how they make money. People go to a restaurant or a bar because they want to be around other people, but bars an restaurants make their money by selling food and drink, not by selling a "social experience." The economic models we've seen so far online are different -- the product is "be social here" and I think that's problematic. Few people want to pay just to hang out, online or off. But those selling this space have to make money somehow -- so if you're Facebook, you make your money by advertising to the people hanging out at your place, meaning to make more money you need to get more people to come be advertised to, or convince advertisers they're getting more value per ad (and so you start intrusively data mining your advertising targets).