@liberosist, I'm half of witness team Sircork. He and I both are very involved in charity work on and off platform, so we had common ground to form a team. The reason I'm commenting is your statement:
Steem was intended to be a social platform.
This has been a big issue for me lately. I'm co-admin of the @thewritersblock with @gmuxx, and I've watched the mounting angst of writers and other creatives as more and more, Steemit seems to lose sight of its original vision. Since most of us have little control over the platform's direction, I've hoped that a grass roots effort by people with a keen interest in evergreen content (fiction, art, etc.) would help retain users who are drifting away. Paulag posted statistics recently that show new user signup was down by half from March to April. I believe this is due to frustration. Do you have any thoughts about how to turn this around?
Something either has to be the best in class, or the most popular in class for it to succeed. Steemit and steem struggle because it tries to be several things and ends up being a shitty spork instead of a really good spoon or fork. If it doesn't offer easy, efficient ROI without incurring huge tax bills then it loses out to better, more hands-off passive investments in the crypto space, and if it's a shitty social media website due to its catering to large investors over small users then it will never grow as a social media platform.
Investors want to free themselves from the tedium of actively managing their investment, more time spent on steemit is less time spent living in the non-steemit world. Most investors do not want to circle-jerk all day with other people who invested in the same thing. They could probably care less who the other investors are. They just want returns. Getting more involved with steem's ecosystem and trying to maximize returns within it often means losing out on free time, which is what most investors actually want.
Sadly there doesn't seem to be a lot of overlap between these large investors and people who love the arts, and I don't think these investors really want people coming here who hope to make income off their art, either. They just want more traders buying up what they're selling.
There is no turning it around from this aspect, it would be easier to just make a whole new website.