That's actually a great idea. I had built a discussion forum prototype a few months ago, that incorporates similar ideas. Unfortunately, social media has severe

That's actually a great idea. I had built a discussion forum prototype a few months ago, that incorporates similar ideas. Unfortunately, social media has severe network effects, making it hard for new products to displace entrenched platforms. http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/community_blog/103 http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/community_blog/103 It's widely known that on Reddit, if you arrive several hours late to a discussion, your comment has very little chance to make it to the top. Exceptions do exist, if your comment is exceptionally good. But if it's just "significantly better" than the existing content, forgetaboutit. The reason for this is simple: Reddit's system takes only 2 factors into account - the number of upvotes and the number of downvotes. So if post A has been viewed by 1000 people, and accumulates a net score of +10, it will still be shown over post B which has been viewed just 50 times and accumulated a net score of +8. Even more insidious: a single downvote is all it takes to doom a post on Reddit. If you went to great trouble to write a moving and eloquent post, and someone who disagreed with you downvoted it as soon as it was posted, it will immediately get moved to the bottom of the pile, and no one else will get the chance to see it and reverse the trend. Is it really fair to prioritize content that just happened to be posted at a better time, and thus, picked up more views? Is it really good to bury a content at the bottom of the heap just because one person downvoted it right after it was posted? At Caucus, we don't think so. In addition to the sophisticated reputation systems mentioned above, we also take into consideration the number of times a content was seen, and guarentee each content sufficient opportunity to been seen and prove itself. This ensures that all newly posted content is given a fighting chance to reach the top, regardless of when they happened to get posted.