I disagree, most people just want to be on the same network/platform as their contacts and most people don't care about extra bells and whistles but a small niche is out there that actually does.
Most people don't imagine they want those features until they see someone else in their social group using them – fancy status in the form of stories is a great example of this.
People have a strong desire to imitate and one-up others in their social group.
If you build a feature that even 1% of users self-start to use, then the social network can snow ball that with the right mechanics. And these feature need only be used by 20-30% of users for it to be considered a success. Every user is not expected to use all features.
