http://au.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-heres-why-im-investing-in-bitcoin-2013-5Coinbase are building a gated community that facebok and apple can only dream about ... call it an online Bitcoin City-State Fortress more like, complete with own currency.
You open your bitcoin account with them, fund it with dollars direct from your bank account (or get paid in btc as a dev) and have direct access to all their merchants (and all other bitcoin accepting merchants) and services, trading .... then along comes a whole new layer of 'social networking' inside the 'Coinbase' I'm picking ... it's going to be like The Base for bitcoin.