I'm not-young enough to have lived in that time when internet was already widespread, but social media's age was yet to come, so I lived through the "golden era" of forums so to speak. Evermind earlier mentioned the Blind Guardian forum, heck, I cyber-lived there for YEARS, met many friends both italian and foreigner and some of them are still friends (or at worst, Facebook friends) and all the time I've been to Germany, be it festivals or visits, it was because of people of the forum.
So I'm a big fan of forums and as someone else above said, they provide an intimacy that big social media pages don't have. I think that is true for both fans and the artists themselves - say that Petrucci one day has some spare time, he'd get a much better understanding of what the fans active online are thinking if he'd browse the forums rather than check a random FB post where, regardless of the content of the post, half the comments are "When are you gonna tour my backyard" posts anyway.
Facebook is great and all but, as long as you enter a small group, you can't really connect with other people the way a forum provides. I follow many bands and I can't even name ONE person that made me think "Ah, cool, this guy / girls has tastes similar to mine" or "I remember his/her post from the other day".
I hope too this forum stays for a long time, and I hope in general that forums will have a resurgence. They're by far the best way to build an online community.