Steemit has a few main problems that are preventing the site from really taking off:

1. Account creation costs money or takes a few days
2. Social media sites are shadowing links to Steemit content
3. People are too influenced by the ability to make money
4. There is no incentive to create high quality content that appeals to non-Steemit users
5. Rewards are not consistent
6. Some toxic community members may turn users off
7. There is no real reason for users to stick around beyond interacting with the community and possibly making a little money from their posts

Out of all of these issues, it's really 1 and 7 that are the worst. The other ones are definitely an issue, but the real problem is that waiting a week for an account just so you can post your blog that nobody will read is not attractive to most people.

If there were additional use cases for the site, then that would be a different story. Yes there are dtube and dlive, but it's only a matter of time before those start getting shadowed by major social media sites as well. And without the ability to share content via social networks, then traffic will only come from Google.

But if the content is not very good to begin with, then it will be a long time before any of those pages get ranked and the site takes off. Not shitting on anyone's content, but content quality =/= post rewards.

Anyway, the real issue is the fact that it's not worth it to users to go through the trouble of waiting for an account or parting with their own money just so they can write posts. Most people don't create any content at all, let alone write. Most people are content consumers.

But with writing/making videos/streaming the only use cases with wide appeal (and with major competition that dominates their respective markets, by the way), then it's rare that people will even want to join in the first place.

The fact that the number of monthly users has remained at 60k even though the total number of accounts has gone up doesn't mean that Steemit has a bad retention rate. I think what it really means is that you have way more spammers creating bot accounts so they can make money by selling votes/resteems. Yes, you have people that make accounts and drop off, but that's with any social media site.

Okay so enough problems. What are the solutions?

1. Create other sidechains like Dlive/Dtube/Utopian that will entice users to come join the party
2. Add more features to Steemit that make it more closely resemble a social network and not just a stripped down Reddit clone for blog posts

I was chatting with a group of devs the other day about creating a game build on Steem. They were trying to reinvent the wheel by thinking of some unique game with all these different features that would seem appealing to people.

That's great and everything, but if people can go play Fallout: New Vegas or play our shitty Steemit game, what do you think they're going to play?

But if you could create a Steemit version of chess, for example, you could hold chess tournaments that you could advertise off site to recruit new users. You could reach out to the professional chess community and tell them about this great platform that pays users to play chess. What are they going to say, no?

Taking it further, you could create an entire "game center" type program with all kinds of games. Reach out to each community for each game and bring them in by telling them the exact same thing.

The problem is that Steemit only appeals to the writing community. Okay that's great, because normally writers are broke and desperate to make any money doing any kind of writing.

Video makers? There's people on YouTube still making mid 5 figures per month from their channels.

Streamers? Good luck competing with Twitch and YouTube. Although the payouts here are pretty good.

Developers? Competing with places like github and stackexchange? Doesn't sound particularly easy either.

I think that by creating simple applications that appeal to wider groups of people AND require minimal explanation AND have minimal barriers to account creation, you can definitely increase user acquisition/retention.

For example, here are some ideas I've come up with recently:

1. Steemit poker app
2. Steemit blackjack app
3. Steemit --insert any gambling game here-- app
4. Steemit chess/checkers/Go/whatever app
5. Steemit Game Center
6. Steemit gambling smart contract (for users to bet on matches between themselves on eSports)
7. Steemit-based Tinder/dating application
8. Add Facebook-like features to Steemit that allow for more photos, a better bio, work history, etc etc
9. Add LinkedIn-like features to Steemit so people can show off their portfolios and find more work
10. A Steemit job board
11. A Steemit app for voice to voice communication
12. An eBay like marketplace built on Steem
13. An Official Steemit Digest (funded/run by the official Steemit Team) that curates and rewards top content
14. A Steemit lottery with drawings 2x week where users can win 80% of the jackpot

Blah blah blah, you get the idea. It's easy to blame the Steemit team for not making any of these things happen. I don't run the company and have no idea what they do all day, but it seems like a lot of these things shouldn't be too hard to implement. I mean they have a freakin sidechain built on Steem with 100s of developers. Maybe put them to work building something?

The other option is to just wait for some enterprising individual to strike gold with the right application that has mass appeal. Possible? Yes. Will it happen faster than the official Steemit team making it happen on their own? God I hope not. But probably yes to that as well.

If you're a dev and want to get involved in projects that are built on the Steem blockchain, PM me on Discord at yallapapi#1970 and I'll invite you to a small group of developers that are doing just that.