It is the internet and www in general that enables people to be connected and share ideas. There's no reason to credit specific sites like Facebook or eBay with connecting people, because someone else would have done it (possibly better) if they had not.
I think there's plenty of credit to go around. Stack Overflow's fundamental decisions (gamification, open content, canonicity, searchability) were very significant in releasing valuable knowledge from the arcane vaults of obscure forums and mailing lists, not to mention creating a reliable(-ish) place to go for new questions. The project also represents an interesting template for community curation (which was begun well before launch), that can be learned from by other projects and startups.
Obviously, someone will always build a better mousetrap eventually. They still deserve credit for actually doing it.
They deserve credit for doing what they did, but it is for doing what they did well, and not what some people confuse that with, which is making what people do on their site possible.
It is language and written language that enables people to be connected and share ideas. There's no reason to credit specific networks like www or the internet with connecting people, because someone else would have done it (possibly better) if they had not.
People credit facebook with connection people, when AOL did the same thing 10 years ago and someone else will be providing software for that in 10 years.
People credit stack overflow with programmers answering each others questions, while Usenet did that 10 years ago and someone else will be helping with that 10 years from now.
Meanwhile, language has been around for thousands of years and is not quite comparable.
