Another point you could take from the piece is that people love being able to broadcast status signals. For example, adding badges/achievements/status to a soc

Another point you could take from the piece is that people love being able to broadcast status signals. For example, adding badges/achievements/status to a social site can boost participation (see Yelp's elite, Stack Overflow badges). It can be dangerous if you drive away your elite users (who are probably 80% of your activity anyway), but it can also be used to bring in new users and retain customers.