Another distant possibility I can't rule out somehow is, that the Larimers are indeed geniuses, and everything is going extremely well, as planned.
The condition under which this came true would be met, if Steem was a project ordered by a social media major, with everything thats happening now just as a test run, and everything published now being viewed as demo content for making a good showcase.
If that cat would jump out of the box it would indeed make a nice leap.
Very distant. I haven't entirely ruled it out, but afaics (and the I believe the flatlining of serious weekly users is supporting this as I anticipated upthread) the design of the token can't onboard the masses nor the speculators to keep it funded while it does, so what is the attraction for the majors? They only jump on something that is growing fast and already in the millions of users, e.g. the recent flurry of videochat social apps.
The open source aspect could have lead to many different ecosystem apps built on top of the blockchain, but I think the structure of the underlying token makes this unlikely to break out of the quagmire I outlined above.
the problem is not the value of steem. the problem is how it works. you can't earn something without the "help" of the "whales". or you have to buy a lot of steel from the "whales" to be able to vote yourself.
It would be perfect for vertical markets, framed by Facebook, with a great deal of authors staffed up and a 3 tier payment system in place. Its written in React.