It is indeed a difference between having money or building a social media project. Money alone does not guarantee that users will follow. We already had that with Google Plus. Gone after a while. You can though buy successful startups when the cash flow is good, which was the strategy Facebook followed.

Nowadays I think the only way to get more users on Steem is to bring the price back to at least over 1 USD, which will decrease the inflation and get the attention of users outside. But for that we need investors buying enough Steem at that price level to keep it stable. Could be reason to decrease the inflation of Steem itself or delete the POB and delegate it to SMT tokens. Just a few thoughts.

Great article by the way from you @tarazkp. Enjoyed reading it and it is difficult nowadays to find postings that are worth investing the time to read it.