It was at one time maybe, but like all things you have to adapt and move. I think the article got it right, we've shifted from buildings what's best for the customer to building what the customer *thinks* they want.
Can't. You need to build a product that generates some revenue in order to pay for servers/developers. To do that, you need either subscribers or ads. People are only going to pay for it if it's really good AND there's a clear advantage over free users. People are only going to be online long enough to view ads if it's addictive. No other way around it.
Hey, this is really great! I used gut feels, spreadsheets, and wikipedia pages when I decided where I wanted to live. One thing that was really important to me, that your site doesn't cover, is growth. I grew up in a small town, and hated the "we're a small town where everyone knows everyone one and we want to keep it that way". I specifically filtered out cites that didn't show Year over Year growth, which surprisingly filtered out hundreds of cities and virtually every small town in America. You could create a section for "History" and then start with census data and work your way out. The age of the town probably reveals a lot too, like the average age of houses, types of jobs, etc...