I think its a similar problem as there was with Steem in the fall, when you are here it take a lot to find a community. Sure the trending page isn't full of garbage, but it is hard to curate a page, from scratch, that will have interesting stuff from people you like when you log in.
Search is shit on all front ends.
Most front ends don't have features like lists, etc. But lists are only good AFTER you find people.
If there was a way to search AND filter such that you can find recent content on the subject you're interested in, consistently OR find like minded people that are active, then I think we would have a better time onboarding.
I know for me, the topics that I enjoy to interact with are NOT active here. The communities I belong to are mostly dead, or they are too popular.
My suggestion? Put more focus on communities and think of them like sub-reddits. Become the blockchain version of Reddit. And focus on community discovery and possibly tweak the rewards in a future HF to encourage community engagement.
I had great hopes for communities that they have yet to fulfil. They ought to be something like reddit so people can find content they like. The Hive userbase is still pretty small and so many interests will not be well represented yet. There is the opportunity to build communities by bringing people in if you can find sponsors who have enough HP to make them work to start with. I know @slobberchops is trying to do this with urbex (urban exploring).
It is up to all of us to find ways to bring people to Hive if we want it to prosper. If it can take off in niche areas it may have a chance.