SimGuru Grant, himself, said that they prefer Facebook and Twitter to the forums because it's just so much easier and faster to communicate with the fans.
I suspect, also, as you say, @GreyLady2010, it's because they hear what they want to hear from the younger and shallower fans, and that they're tired of having to justify the decisions to the fans on this forum, who have every right to feel ripped off for all the money they paid for this game.
And before anyone says: "Well, you didn't have to buy it, you knew you weren't getting toddlers!" etc. etc., remember all those posts that claimed that we couldn't possibly say we disliked the game until we had actually bought it and paid it, and made it clear that *our* opinion didn't matter because we clearly didn't know what we were talking about.
So, in essence we were told we HAD to buy it in order to decide if we liked it or not.
