Important projects

I'm interested only really in two cryptos at the moment.
Ripple, the one blockchain that understands credit, and Cryptonote, which is a short of white label blockchain with a clever anonymity function.
I need to know more about the other smart-contract technologies.
Over at Hull & HullCoin my hosts this week. we've been considering not so much using a blockchain as a transaction ledger but using Ethereum as a social networking platform. However I suppose that Ethereum is a long way from that.