You're giving up after less than a year? I have a rule of thumb. I think that If you want to start a startup, make sure you're willing to devote at least 3 years to getting it going. Otherwise, don't bother. It's difficult enough to get a business off the ground at all, without trying to do so with an extremely tight time constraint. A corollary to this rule I suppose is that you should ensure that you have 3 years worth of resources and motivation before deciding to take a gamble on a startup.

I know it's easier and quicker to create a web startup today, but remember that you are still ultimately interfacing with the rest of the world. The rest of the world still moves at a rather leisurely pace. A lot of successful companies really don't start taking off until the third year of business. The rule of thumb is that for the first year, you're usually losing money. By the second year, you're hoping to break even, and by the third, should the business prove to be viable, you start making a profit. Even in the case of technology companies where this does not hold true nearly as much, there should at least be a parallel resemblance to this trajectory. Instead of being profitable in year 3, perhaps a technology startup begins to generate revenue, or is cash flow positive. The key characteristic is that in year 3, some sort of inflection point for success is reached.

If you don't hit this inflection point in year 3, you probably will never hit it. It's safe to say that you gave it your all, and quit the endeavour. If you do hit that inflection point in year 3 though, the proverbial sky is the limit. But in my opinion, it really does take 3 years worth of effort to say that you really put in a concerted effort.

Do you have the resources and will to give it some more effort? My advice to you is not to consider your current startup a failure. Rather, visualize your startup as a swimmer that's trying to cross a lake but has underestimated the direction and flow of the current. So you're a bit off course from where you need to be. The answer is not to give up on where you wanted to go, but instead change your tactics and find another route to your destination. Maybe it's longer, takes a bit more effort, and requires more time.

All the problems I see with Trogger are ones whose solutions are within your ability to solve. To me, Trogger appears to be a Web 2.0 version of Usenet. Except that it does not address any of the the problems that plagued Usenet:

The inability to prevent spammers from ruining the dialogue.

The fact that conversations in Usenet needed to stay on topic so that finding conversations was easy, but in real life conversations seldom do and people enjoy it that way. Reward tangents. People go off on tangents in conversations because they want to remain engaged. They leave conversations when they're unengaged. Why would you want people to leave your conversations?

The short history of the web has shown that protocols don't make much money by themselves. You don't want to be the protocol of conversations on the Internet. Instead, choose a niche and be the conversation for that niche. Look at Stack Overflow as an example. If the Stack Overflow website was simply released as a general discussion platform, I'm pretty sure the thing would have tanked.

If I were in your shoes and I had the resources to survive for a little while longer, here would be my abstract thought process:

1) Reduce the scope of the problem. You know what discussion boards traditionally suck? Healthy living/workout ones. They're all sh*t, but there's a lot of money in that market. Find a market like that and be THE forum for that market, like Stack Overflow is for software devs looking for technical answers.

2) With the scope reduced, take the opportunity to refactor the user experience. Do you still need to integrate with Twitter and Facebook? If not, cut out those features. Cut out everything you possibly can until you've distilled the design down to the useful minimum. Then don't add features until you start seeing your users really hacking the system to their needs, like posting ascii diagrams to try to illustrate a point (e.g., if you did not have an ability to post pictures).

3) The most important part... Everything you do needs to be thought of as costing money or making money. Ideally your strategy involves trying to balance a cost with a revenue generator. For example, simply to host the site will cost you money. Instead of waiting for $1M to fall out of some VC's hands into your lap, start thinking about ways to offset this cost. On the easy end of the spectrum is ad revenue. Implement ads in a way that people are used to and that will begin to make you some money. Then try to grow this revenue. On the other end of the spectrum is trying to find sponsors. This task will be easier if you have narrowed your scope in step 1 and are targeting a specific market. For example, if you decide to become the ultimate discussion place for plastic surgery, Google plastic surgery and find out who's buying up ad words. Find a way to get in contact with them and offer them the ability to sponsor your website for a fee.

Now, whenever you go to implement a feature you can ask yourself the question "Will this feature make my users happy and cause them to use the website more, thus making sponsors happy or make me more ad revenue?" If not, don't implement the feature. If it will just make them happy but won't make them use your website more, don't bother doing it. It's amazing what this distinction can have in making a business a successful one or not.