From a creator perspective it makes a great place to build a stronger community, as you are on more equal ground with your followers and all your followers now

From a creator perspective it makes a great place to build a stronger community, as you are on more equal ground with your followers and all your followers now have a place to talk about what they follow. Hard to be "equals" on twitter or on youtube. For github projects it depends, but it is usually tech support, but one where more often than not other users/followers will be helping other users/followers, which leaves the creator with less support work. From a follower perspective, it is a place that usually garners like minded individuals, meaning you can often find friends/people to do stuff with. It is also a very good way to hear news about whatever you are following, a lot of server have a ton of users but little activity because most people are there for the news. The reason why people don't just create forum websites is mostly because it costs money and secondly because going to a website is more cumbersome than opening an app that holds all these "forums".