TedRheingold presented on what happened on [Dogster http://www.dogster.com] and [Catster http://www.catster.com] when the primary goal was trying to reflection the love that users have to their dogs and cats.

Instead of site speed, feature set, scalability, marketability, the top goal was reflecting user passion.

[Here http://sters.dogster.com/barcamp are some kind of boring slides.]

Much of the presentation was talking thru user activity on the site and features made just for them.

[Like http://www.dogster.com/pet_page.php?i=112970&j=t this dog's page]

or [the http://www.catster.com/diary/dcentral.php diaries people are writing]

or [the http://www.dogster.com/forums/index.php?t=18423 way they love talking in the voice of their pets]

The major point is that the object of your users passion (in this case dogs or cats) is irrelevent. It can be trading stocks, home improvement, unix hacking, whatever. What matters is reflecting their passion as thoroughly and extensivly as possible. It starts with the feature sets but has to continue thru UI, site copy, color palette, answering emails .... everything. If you can relfect their passion at all levels they will never need to find another provider of this service.