I think part of the reason is that we are in a bear market. Any reversal and the users that left will come back running

Honestly i don't care if those people ever come back and i don't really want them to come back. Obviously their first priority is money and nothing else. Money is good, everyone started to get involved for this but everyone needs to understand it's about we and not i

But the real community is still here. Yesterday 52,778 accounts transacting on the Blockchain.

Sadly because made a research and a post for that matter after the whole netcoins go and vote thing the number of active accounts is even lower. By active as you said to it counts someone that does a transaction meaning at least one of the following in one day: post,comment,reply,upvote,general transactions

Here's were it gets sadder

From those 55k of "active accounts" a lot of them are bots and double or triple accounts many users have. Also a lot of people use autovoting services and curation trails(i am not against this, i love it) but they count as active accounts while they may not get in steemit for days
.Generally speaking the actual unique users in a day around 9-10k i suspect and others have said 1k.