I recently turned off AdBlock "just to see" for a few weeks. Maybe I had completely forgotten how bad online ads were but a few things really bothered me. I would get ads for shopping sites in my recent history (while browsing a totally unrelated site) that showed me items related to searches on said shopping website. A few times the ad would show me exact search results. Also it's unnerving seeing my Facebook profile pic right next to an empty comment field.
That WSJ article attributes Digg's fall from grace to "rivals like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc." and makes no mention of the Digg v4 redesign disaster. That was what did them in more than anything.
EDIT: The story has been updated with a new paragraph, "A series of redesigns..."
RE: point #2.
To be fair you should also factor in the time, effort and gas it takes to go to Redbox, wait in line to rent and return discs. All the while hoping that new release is available and not scratched up. For most of us, that extra $2 to get it from Xbox is money well spent.
I have 3 Google Mail accounts (a regular gmail and 2 Google Apps for your Domain email) on my Samsung Galaxy S. Using the Gmail App, I have access to conversations, labels, everything and it keeps each inbox separate. It's truly a godsend.