I believe the game has reached that point where it is ready for five times as many players. Niantic not long back sent out five invites to each agent. I believe it has also been approving more requests made directly to it through its site for membership.
When you have five times more players, you can not have the same number of portals. You can not even have five times more portals. You want 10 times more portals - at least 10 - for those five times as many players.
All that increases the velocity of the game. The game changes as you keep adding more and more people to it. Just like the Internet changed as more and more computers got connected to it.
There are agents today who feel like they pretty much know everyone who is playing. That will soon no longer be true. You ride the subway, but you don't know everyone who is on the train. You hardly know anyone who is on the train. Ingress has to reach for those scales.
I think Niantic should approve more portals faster. One should not have to wait two months to get a portal approved. The wait should be more like two weeks.
