I think it will always be like a typical freemium game. Most users (95%) never monetize, and have lower engagement on average. What gives them power and distributes it away from those with great engagement/power/monetization is the collective power of the minnows.
A strong focus on enabling a larger user base I think should be a primary goal, and by enabling I mean:
- Marketing, spreading the word
- Careful awareness and management of user expectations and incentives to keep in line with game theory & psychology.
- Streamlining the user interface. Not that its bad now, but there are always usability improvements that could happen. Small annoyances can kill a product.
- Enable third parties to create alternative front ends so users can go to whatever interface they find most palatable.
- Focus on great mobile platform support/integration. Curation is easy to do while you're sitting in a Dr.'s office, at lunch, on the toilet. Authoring is hard to do on a phone. If I could post a single photo of something I experience it doesn't mean it is poor content, though such a post would likely do poorly at present as there is a tendency to focus on quality = quantity it seems.
- Make it easy to join. I have several friends who can't until the SMS feature is available.
With a user base an order of magnitude larger I think the sum of a ton of minnow votes will collectively provide the incentive it should and the wealth distribution be less of a factor.
Anyway, just spitballing ideas.
"Careful awareness and management of user expectations and incentives to keep in line with game theory & psychology."
Exactly...the system is good...there is a PR problem in the Expectations Department