I upvoted this post because it brought good discussions.

could be some people like me - woke up to negative reputation yesterday.
even I felt like giving up.   I hope to see more normals for diversity too.

Simply Great Information and Presentation

I think there is enough "value" from Whales that can be evenly distributed(if they upvote) that enough people will stay on.

The drop in users happened shortly after the hardfork and changes to posts and pay. Isn't it equally possible that this is just a drop in accounts designed to abuse the old system?

it's the reputation system weeding out users with bad reputation

Colleges and other schools started :0 ... cause not very active now and have to squeeze in a bit free time for steemit cause of things are pick up quicker here.

If you look at the rate of adoption you need to look at the cycle bitcoin is a fine example from small user base to how it peaks as people become aware then the drop off then further expension.

This can be a solution !?

https://steemit.com/steemit/@fogspam/first-advertising-campaign-of-steemit-in-romania-the-best-way-to-make-steemit-viral-just-follow-my-example-more-users-investors

@laonie I with the recent reputation update, a lot of people that owned bots found that the bots were no longer usable. I think the drop has a lot to do with this.

Except this didn't get thousands because it's a mildly critical/questioning post. Nice.

Perhaps the numbers dropping is less bots being signed up by those who were using them to flood / spam on comments?

I cannot say for sure as I do not know.. But that is my theory. <3

最开始的时候，梦想着，steem是普通千千万万网民，公平自由的桃花源，是一个我们可以共同建设的家园。然后梦想破灭了，阶级永远存在，无论在哪里。

When you get thousands of SD for this post from whale fellowship of mutual admiration, you will understnad why ordinary users are leaving...

They will then slide into the realm of negative reputation, and ignored forever by the Steem network...  http://steemwhales.com/?p=1096&s=reputation

If they ever log back in, they will be quickly reminded of why they left.

It seems people are losing interest in this site, maybe something is terribly wrong here, maybe it's because of the voting collusion by the bots?

For the future of STEEM, we need to win the heart of normal users, not only top authors, What do you think?  I agree they need to change soon. And shot you an upvote

Laonie I have been noticing the same thing  , I also was going to purchase more but will hold off until I see some change.

I have to admit... I feel somewhat disappointed reading this... what is normal to you and who is "top authors?"

Every day I have been posting quality, original and very inspirational content and even put my pride aside and posted a raw video of me at one of my most vulnerable and embarrassing moments.. to share with everybody with the intention of taring down the walls of comfort. 
**[LET ME SEE YOUR TOP AUTHORS DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS](https://steemit.com/disorder/@mrwang/episode-1-awareness)**

There are several new and regular contributors with **AMAZING** work on here and you are spitting in their faces of by saying, "people are losing interest on this site" & "we need to win the heart of **normal users**"

a post like this is discouraging  for  everyone **"down here"**
maybe you should reconsider
plain and simple.. as an active contributer... this is how I was feeling a few days ago
https://steemit.com/steemit/@mrwang/steemit-comment-bots-got-me-like
http://i.imgur.com/oOAIMui.jpg

因为今天我没来 ：）

I think the need to attract more to steemit needs to be done. Only problem is, how? Using the steemit as a platform to earn some money, or using steemit as a new 'reddit-like' platform? Let's be very honest here, I'm very sure most people here think of steemit as a platform to earn some money, then realise its a good idea, either by reading some steem related posts here, or by reading the whitepaper. But from what @laonie pointed out in the post, I believe the reduction in active users is because, some passionate writers had their passion burned out. It happens to everybody. Some really good posts, gathered too little reward for the writers, or in most cases, $0. 

Steemit is going to be a good platform to bring in non-cryptocurrency user, no doubt. But at the very moment, most of us here are probably more interested in Steem topics itself. If this goes on, writers on other topics, will not find a reason to continue posting here. If this cannot be solved in a way or another, then perhaps we might need to say, Steemit WAS going to be a good platform to bring in more public who knows almost nothing about cryptocurrency. Something is wrong here like what @laonie pointed out, and really?!  this post at the moment has only 121 votes with less than 7 hours to payout. 

@laonie really good effort in the chinese characters in your post. Well done, by really a pity this post will not have enough votes to bring you to the trending page i guess.

Rome was not built in a day.

if the stats are correct then we do have a problem

I've used a few write to earn sites and this is pretty normal, we had an influx of new users nearly two weeks ago,  the ones who thought it's easy money are dropping off now they've realised writing a few words about what they ate last night isn't going to make any money.  when you take into account the steep cryptocurrency learning curve,   the dropping share price, and the bots/spammers being decimated by the new rating system then 20% isn't  that surprising

Thats pretty neato that you are documenting the users daily. How do you get the info? Just curious.

Not sure the development at present stage is healthy. The excitement seems to taper off. Every thing slows down and hopefully not to come to a full stop. Fewer posts and majority of posts get no upvotes even after one hour. If someone can study the causes and write a post, I will give him my upvote. I try to stay focus and not get discouraged. I am sure it will be sorted out for the good of everyone, that includes investors, whales, dolphins and minnows.

7-28 was the attack of the bots, thats why it shot up so suddenly.

When They hid the bots voting and comments, the bots no longer counted as active... so like all the stuff at the bottom that you can click on the button to show like issac.asimov , and all the tiny negative votes that were bothering people went away, and all the accounts that were doing that went away too.

Good research. If you look at account creation at: https://steemle.com/charts.php 
You'll notice we had a lot of active users when we had a spike in new accounts.  So that doesn't surprise me too much that on 7/26-7/29 we had a lot of 'activity' and then it decreased.  It's just because of the new accounts.   I'm sure there are bot/spam accounts being created as well so I think the team is probably making account creation more strict.   You can also see  In any case right now it's hard to tell the growth rate of legitimate users and our activity level is pretty flat so I think we need to improve retention and real growth for sure.  Those are the primary metrics I look at along with user engagement.

Yes, that is a disturbing trend indeed!  The love is certainly spread a bit thin.  If you enjoy cinemagraphs ~ @timelapse

I don't know that 10 days of data is enough to conclude that people are losing interest. The content quality factor serves to inhibit people. Many think they are  just posting in return for Steem. It is not that simple. The content must be of high quality and garner the interest and upvotes  of the  Steemit community. We *will* lose a certain percentage of new users when they are not rewarded. Nevertheless, I think the situation you observed deserves to be monitored further.

Hey @laonie,  the drop in bot activity due to the reputation system is the primary cause of the decrease in active users...but that's not a bad thing:

https://steemit.com/rep/@trending/bots-are-on-the-downfall-quality-of-content-is-up-the-reputation-system-is-working-exactly-as-intended

值得重视