You're giving good answers for how to make a social media application more popular and used by more people. You're not giving answers on how to increase the value of a cryptocurrency token.

When you say things like

learn from SNAX

The disconnect becomes clear:

https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/snax-token

There's nothing there. No trading volume. No value.

Maybe it will come later, but maybe not. I've seen too many failed attempts at social media with financial rewards to think they will succeed. I see STEEM (and, importantly, Steemit.com and other front ends for the Steem blockchain) still here.

Talking about making things free, making guest options, etc highlights the fundamental disconnect within the Steem community which has been going on since the beginning. Nothing on a blockchain can be free or it will be exploited. That's a defining characteristic of blockchain technology that is unavoidable. No amount of wishing it to be different will change it. Someone always has to pay for resources on a blockchain.

I've been talking about these misunderstood expectations for over two years. I highly recommend giving this a read:

How Managing Expectations Can Grow the STEEM Ecosystem

If that product is not working, the whole concept is wrong and there is no value.

And yet we're still here, even with a flagship that has basically not improved much at all. This, I think, is due to a failure by Steemit, Inc to focus efforts on improving this interface. Maybe now that we have Steem Engine and a way to tokenize other projects like https://palnet.io we might see more innovation and improved user experiences coming.

I should have clarified that by rewards, I was just talking about financial rewards. I completely understand that if the experience was better here and all their friends wanted to move (like they did from MySpace), then hurray, we'd all be happy.

You have some good ideas here (such as contracting with massive brands or media companies). I'm hopeful the increased curation rewards with HF21 might improve trending ("might" is not even a positive feeling it will). I'll give you a nice vote mainly for clarifying the exact disconnect many people have when they think about the Steem ecosystem. They think about a website or about social media without realizing what they are really upset about is a low author or curator rewards payout which has everything to do with blockchain and cryptocurrency realities reflected in the token price and little to do with anything else.