Most people will always flock to the “free” option that all their buddies are on. It’s entirely possible for me to host streaming video on my web server that I pay for. Hell, it may even be within my skill set to deploy it. But if you watched my video(s) on my sever, there would be no easy, one-shot way to populate similar videos on all my friends own web servers. The same applies to (micro)blogging services like Facebag and the Tweeter.

You get what you pay for, and most don’t want to pay a subscription fee to watch random cat videos whenever the feeling strikes.

Can't we just use Gopher?