So what about OpenBazaar? Has that not become useful yet? I read some articles saying there are something like 700 businesses on it now. I haven't tried that hard to look for them, but in my limited searches I haven't been able to find any.

Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for some e-entrepreneur? Doesn't even have to be as ambitious as OpenBazaar, I will be happy if someone is able to put together a centralized, non-criminal Bitcoin marketplace, before they worry about a fully decentralized P2P one. Given how it's pretty simple these days to put together just about any sort of e-commerce platform you want, using open source tech and a few good programmers, surely it's time someone tried at least?
If it really is true that even at this stage, there just aren't enough people engaging in actual commerce with BTC to make such a project worthwhile, then that seems like a pretty major hurdle in the road towards BTC gaining adoption. If this is the case - then wouldn't a concerted push from the BTC community to get people spending coins be a good strategy? People who are interested in the potential of BTC to be a real competitor to centralized national currencies should be thinking about this as a priority, in my opinion. One idea would be to try and encourage those who do sell products or services for BTC to offer real value. In my limited experience of seeing these things on offer, when vendors do offer a BTC payment option it tends to be at a premium over credit card or Paypal or whatever. Doesn't help that all of the exchanges and major BTC vendors charge a pretty hefty premium just to sell people BTC with fiat currency, anyway! So, from the consumer's point of view, when they start looking into this "revolutionary new money" they find that they are getting charged for the privilege at every step. After being convinced to look into it because they hear about "low fees" and the like, this probably comes as a bit of a disappointment.

So yeah, bit of a long post - but how about some sort of initiative aimed at getting users to spend their coins rather than just hoarding them? And some sort of community pressure to get those who provide BTC services, or just sell BTC itself, to offer more value to potential customers?