It's a good question and one really need to address. I think we lost a fair few users due to the Steem/Hive split as some were not happy about that. I have been keeping an eye on the user stats and we have lots lots of minnows and dolphins. Bigger accounts have obviously powered down.
A falling Hive price will not help matters. What we do have is a more attractive platform that Steem which has turned to shit lately.
I am supporting a load of new/small accounts to try and keep them going, but I cannot be engaging with them all the time. We could build support groups around communities. If they can at least get comments it may encourage them to stick with it.. Rewards will be a bonus to start with.
People talk about it not meeting their expectation of rewards, but making anything is better than nothing. Even if you just do Actifit posts you can make a few cents. There are plenty of challenges and competitions to inspire posts.
I am disappointed with the lack of growth over the 4 years. You have to wonder what you need on top of 'free money' (well not quite) to attract the masses.
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.
We have to be prepared to acknowledge the possibility that setting up the expectation of making money and failing to meet the expectation may have more negative value than the positive value of earning small amounts.
We need to set the right expectations. I would never tell anyone they can get rich from Hive.