How would you go about getting traction? (opens in new tab)

-Make the featured Swayable centered and prominent.

-Put the stream somewhere else, it's distracting.

-Move on to another featured Swayable once I voted on the current one.

-Most importantly, this part: "reveal the results | see the comments | add a comment | flag this Swayable embed on your site | Swayable URL: http://swy.bz/VZDYop | share" is overwhelming. I would replace them with Like and Tweet buttons with provocative titles (e.g. "John thinks that Britney Spears is better than Lady Gaga! What do you think?").

This is definitely a chicken-and-egg problem. Until you get more users, you're not going to get the really interesting sways.

You definitely want to make sure you create a feature to determine which users have the most sway.

Ways to get traction: Find things that people vote on now. With March Madness coming up, maybe do something around that? Or well known debates with passionate online communities?

This is definitely a website where the main reward is getting feedback. The more feedback each individual gets, the more likely that person will return. Therefore, the best thing that one can do in this situation is to forget about traction and features and focus 100% on community building.