Technically it could be said they started it because they posted what would be coming. They then never said “Well we used to interact with you about new things, but aren't going to do that anymore.”
But even more then that I don't think there is a product out there that doesn't use focus groups. If you have a market large enough to sustain a business you have too large a market to poll directly. So you take samplings to try to get an idea of the larger whole.
With every thing obviously digitized they can get good pictures of what will sell reliably, but if they want to grow or innovate in their field that “focus group” is where they can get ideas of where to do so.
That's us. If they want to simply plod along they can certainly do so without ever looking at this page, but if they want to do anything more then churn out more of the same old thing this board is a resource only a fool would ignore.