Minimalism will always win the day. It's how Google surpassed Yahoo and Facebook surpassed MySpace. I am trying to build a Steem project that follows that exact line of thinking for a very minimalist post-and-go sort of experience. I love that multiple platforms can exist without the need to try to be the only one because you can focus on a niche feature-set, but like indie art, it yields mixed results.

What I am working on will have no more functionality than posting, commenting, up/down voting, and filtered feeds. Being designed specifically for mobile and tablet responsiveness through an SPA makes it flexible, light-weight, platform independent, and extremely agile.

At any rate, I think your point is even more crucial than most smaller dev teams end up realizing and so they OVER work the problem. You get so wrapped up in "what could be done" that you forget "what should be done". It doesn't need to be Rube Goldberg, but you might still get your fan/user base that way, too.