Yea, I mentioned in my first comment from the thread that I think it's more of a loyalty scheme where features are unlocked the more NOTES you hold. As for Google +, well, as of April, that won't exist any more. Google sent an email out that they will be shutting that all down.
I haven't heard of flixxo actually, don't know about the downvote problem but I get what you mean, videos do take longer if you want to make a proper one rather than a still image.