Today I stumbled upon a very interesting blog post about "critical mass". While it doesn't tell you how to reach critical mass with your site - this is entirely up to you, it does help you better understand what you need to do and what to focus on in order to acquire and retain users. Also make sure you read the comments too, some are pretty insightful.
There are many more interesting posts on this guy's blog, all worthwhile, I suggest you take a look.
Update: I searched the net a bit and I found a couple more links on this topic:
- A downloadable book about building online communities.
- A facebook group for community managers.
