Did you ever figure this out?
I started trying to use this:
http://www.gavick.com/magazine/wordpress-quick-tip-4-automatically-set-the-first-post-image-as-a-featured-image.html
Only works if you upload your own media. I am trying to integrate the featured image with the WPMU status plugin. It would let you drop in a URL and allow post comments (just like Facebook)
It would let you have a huge base of authors that can post really easy.
A Reddit crawler would be even more awesome.
