just a relatively small amount of "speakers"

Most people who know Esperanto learned it for fun and/or travel. And for that it functions very well, as long as you know other Esperantists. Obviously Esperantists know where and how to find eachother.

There is Pasporta Servo, "a directory of people who are willing to host other Esperanto speakers in their homes for free. As of 2004, there are 1227 hosts in 79 countries."

And then there are the many Esperanto meetings/events. There are dozens every month.

Yes, there are not many Esperanto-speakers. But that is neither negative nor a problem.

I can understand that one can decide that Esperanto isn't interesting enough for them because there are not many speakers (although so far I've found finding other Esperantists much easier than finding other Perl coders), but I absolutely hate it when someone says Esperanto is dead, unused or a failed experiment. It might not be your favourite language, but don't spread lies (Note: this last paragraph is not in reply to what you said).