How to grow a social website?

I'm now the admin of a social portal. Today, I just had a discussion with my boss on the strategy of the social portal. Maybe because we just took over, he is very kan cheong about the pageview rates of the portal, especially it dropped in May and only increased 100K in June.

I showed him other competing websites, plus my plan, however he was still not satisfied, citing no breakthrough as a reason.

Until I threw him this question. How do you measure the success of the portal ? Is it only pageviews ? Is that a narrow view ?

I believe the portal has a higher calling, and I shall persist to convince him!