If people only cared about the money, then they wouldn't be using other social media and blogging platforms. If Steemit wants to attract and retain users, then Steemit needs to have an attractive user interface. The money is an added incentive to join.
Inflation is an issue, but there are mechanisms on the platform to counteract it. As I stated in the post - that's something that a pure investor would likely consider about this platform: Do I want to "invest" if I have to actively work for any ROI? There needs to be other ways to get some ROI on the platform before an investor decides to buy in - options that don't require working this like a job.
In any case, the site can't survive with only a few thousand active users. It needs more development and marketing. That would be true even if there was no money involved for users. Social media requires people to make it "social." A few thousand on a global platform isn't attractive to other potential users and it isn't sustainable - underlying cryptocurrency or not.
When the price was 3$ the active numbers of users was 15 000 per day roughly and 50 000 per week.
You can look at the charts and you will see that the more the price goes down the fewer users on the platform. This is because the price of steem is directly correlated to the rewards on the platform. Steemit is designed to reduce the price/steem over time due to the hyper inflation ( which is totally unecessary), so this platform ( with the current specs) will never be able to attract more users since the rewards will always go down.
Even if steemit's interface was much better than facebook it will not be able to attract new users ( there are like 100's of social media site out there but none come close to facebook or twitter.
The only thing that could make people migrate here is the money aspect, sure a good interface would help but if the price keeps going down the interface wouldn't matter .