The advantage for me at least is volume. In online interaction you can connect with a large number of people at once. For example, it's easy to carry a chat con

The advantage for me at least is volume. In online interaction you can connect with a large number of people at once. For example, it's easy to carry a chat conversation with 2 or 3 people whereas in real life you'd need to actually have everyone in the same room, interested in the same topic, etc. Of course the trade off is usually depth (and as you mentioned, privacy) so it's not always the best thing. But it is very helpful for short updates with people you don't talk to otherwise.