I think this is a cool concept. Let me caution you that I worked on a similar project about 3 years ago. What we found out was that most people that solicit advice, ignore it. We used affiliate links to monetize, and didn't find social feedback to be significantly better at converting than blog posts, or anything else.
What that meant was that we were in the same eyeballs rat race that everyone else is.
If what you are asking is how do you become the next pinterest, in terms of viral growth, it's a lot of hard work and a dash of luck. Shake and hope it turns into gold.
I'm using affiliate links to monetize it too, but it definitely it is not a company or something that needs to break even in x months. Actually I had a great time coding it and I learnt a lot about the technologies it uses (facebook open graph, amazon apis, twitter bootstrap...) so in terms of ROI it's already covered by far.
Being said that, of course I want it to be huge. Not as the next pinterest because it'd require lots of resources and energy but more like a bootstraped project that grows organically and we'll see.
In other words, I built something that I want to use (no other ambitions), and right now I am wondering if it could be something mainstream or not
What that meant was that we were in the same eyeballs rat race that everyone else is.
If what you are asking is how do you become the next pinterest, in terms of viral growth, it's a lot of hard work and a dash of luck. Shake and hope it turns into gold.