I've recently started using
twitter. They call it a microblogging platform: each blog post must have under 140 chars. It's basically the same with the first page of facebook - a way to stay updated with what your "friends" are doing.
What I like about twitter though is that by "following" individuals or companies you're interested into, you can learn a lot in a short period of time. For example I am following some development magazines and some php gurus and by reading the articles they link to, I got a lot of ideas about what I could do for Etano.
The same could work for you - there must be marketing people sharing their knowledge or other dating site owners or companies you might be interested into. Or whatever topic you're interested in, there are surely other people sharing their knowledge on that topic.
I am using
twhirl as a desktop client which stays in the traybar and notifies me of new posts.
If you want to follow me, I am "datemill" on twitter. I promise not to tell you there about what I eat for breakfast. I'll stay on the topic of Datemill and development.
Now about things I am considering for Etano and I am studying at the moment: I've made quite some progress with a face recognition application in php: this could be great for profile pictures for example - members upload a photo and the application automatically crops the photo around their face and use that as the profile photo.
Also, I just finished an addon for a customer - members could use their webcam to take a profile photo right now instead of uploading an existing photo which they might not have or might not like how they look like.
Third thing: geolocation APIs. Both google and yahoo and probably msn live have apis for their map software that let you retrieve any information you want about a place. For example, I've been able to get the list of states (counties) for any country. Implementing one of these APIs for Etano could be great: instead of distributing the whole US list of states and cities with Etano you could get access to the whole world for free and without the overhead of using your database.
