You make some really good points. I think they stand on their own, but it's a bit rude to not reply.
I believe Leo is using their advertising revenue to reward users with, and I believe that more front-ends should do something similar. Facebook tried to pretend they didn't care about advertising for years. We see how that worked out. I think we should establish rules and precedent for the types of advertising that's acceptable for different front-ends now, and use the income, with tracking statistics, to tip users that continue to use the block-chain and encourage people to use particular front-ends. That is one potential solution to the continued revenue issue.
I think that particular issue may require an actual rethinking of the chain itself though, to allow for Hive income beyond just one week. The advertising model may work, but I think it may be necessary to consider a change to the actual payment model.
You're right that it's run by programmers, and it's obvious. Eventually we man solve these issues and my post may mean nothing in time. Maybe some of the other commenters are right that some of the efforts underway will on-board users. But I wouldn't have posted this if I don't think these issues are actually a big deal. We should be thinking about not just on-boarding new users, but what might keep them from staying. Perhaps Leo will solve these issues enough to on-board many new users, but it may also be that they onboard a ton of new users that abandon their accounts in weeks or months.
Of course they may come back in months or years to an account that's now worth hundreds of dollars. Hopefully they saved their keys.
I think what might really help onboard users is a way to somehow allow easy comments even from those not on the blockchain. Then they may comment on a post and get engaged. But we still need to make it easier to use, for once they create a real account.
But key to doing that would be to do it right. Many sites offer you easy comments with a login from FB or Google, but then it's your real name displayed. I'd do it with a quick AJAX signup with some kind of temp account, and an email to signup for a real one with detailed instructions.