My question is are they willing to do what it takes to make this successful? History hasn't shown much desire (or ability?) on their part for wanting to make steem successful.

I think more than some around here would agree but all things have a cause (not necessarily a reason). I'm not sure if i'm allowed to speak the D-word ...
I never heard about the platform until it was nearly 2 years old which , for me, is really weird because i'm so old on planet Crypton i was burning GPUs when you could actually get bitcents for that ... i actually didnt believe in BTC when it was way under the $100 mark (my bad, but no regrets) so its really weird it took that long to get under my nose.

So from what i have learned i say the rift with Larrimer is partly to blame (but let's not speak the name out loud) as from all i see the teamSTEEM is supreme

when it comes to developing :)

but ... a company needs more than tek-heads

BUT, this place is CRAWLING with suited-up shiney profile pictures of the next paradigm of business guru who ALL will tell you what you should buy, and how you should do it, i think THEY could do a lot more filling the gap steemit inc. has in its ranks instead of draining the pool and blaming it on a few bots lol

If you look around, twitter i probably mentioned, google and facebook have been giving it all away for free but their BIG5 position basically comes all from ad-money at the core.
Which again, should warn us to not leave development to the IT-department and to not leave sales to the tek-heads

i suck at the mating dance myself (when it comes to that whole thing where you keep smiling while people try to drive sharp things up your rear to bring your end of the bargain down or compete b/c theirs is better and what not) but i know that from myself. If i had a business at corporate level (which i think steemit could claim from 1 million accounts) i would need someone who can do that mating dance for me, while i focus on chasing skirt (not quite but im better at that than selling the goods) and doing "my thing" - at the risk of sounding biblical, we all have our thing
it's very important to recognize that the strengths and the weaknesses, not you have to put them on your front-page when you go outside , i should say front-face, but to admit to yourself what they are is a lot more important.

Ads depend on bulk a lot ... so what they need for that is MORE accounts and MORE posts per day, as i mentioned here and there, twitter did not sell out like hotcakes because they had the next rawling or nobelprize winner on every single tweet, they sold out on sheer numbers and bulk.

My impression is most people here "in command" came into the game rich and have no real clue what money is lol ... well under a certain level i mean, and some keep weird strict notions on content and rules, and enforce them to great damage of some others. It's like a whole police squad that never knew any other way than enforcement dropped in sometimes (in some places) = not good for bulk.

"we have 1 billion posts a day and we have 300 million accounts" will as far as i know sell a lot more to advertisers than "we have the greatest quality percentage per post, even if its only a few thousand"

that's business, and this IS businesss, its not an ngo, not a low non profit, its BUSINESS , and crypto is HARD business these days, so all the morals are great but they wont build a solid foundation, and "hoping" on your own product to stay over a certain price when its something thats speculated on is close to gambling.

All the talk is true, the salespitch its all true, it IS advanced and it IS lightning fast and it IS fee-less but , big money doesnt wanna see advanced, it wants to see zeroes despite that ...

flixxo has greenpeace and cola as advertisers, they'res till running the same ads they did from the start still handing out flixx to watch them, its a completelly different system and i'm not saying steemit should (because who am i ...) pay their users to watch their ads , however, if they can establish a source of revenue that's not from speculation , planning will be a lot easier because its not dreaming and hoping.
After that, the sky's the limit , who knows ... "a.i."s ... "flying cars" ... whatever the others came up with over the years and just pushed on the scrap heap after pouring billions in it show how much money there is in advertising. I betcha fiver only the millionnaires here would complain about having ads on screen if it helped the steem price (best way for that would be to have advertisers pay in steem ofcourse as they would have to buy it, its the way classic forex works : if apple wants to make a billion deal in japan they need to buy Yen, period , yen price goes up (marginally over 1 billion) period ... that's simply how its done lol)

words i dread , "how its done" ... but in this case i think
ofcourse everything bitcoin related and if you're not shy you can accept every single who has an ICO, because thats just business but from the other trend id say the likes of greenpeace, wwf, or Amnesty (if i see the amount of talk about venezuela for instance) who all have MASSIVE advertising budgets might not be bad places to contact and poll to see what can be arranged, with palms upward and open books ... probably the best way for those...

But its not my company

it IS my steem though, and it IS a shame they don't have Grant Cardone on the sales dept.

absolutely

@jrcornel

come on #steemit ,

_{my globalized english ... by "palms upward" i mean "we come in peace" and have no hidden daggers lol, not begging ... wouldnt be the first time i'm misunderstood}