While we’re on the subject of RSS. It appears that “only 2% of online adults and 5% of online teens in North America use RSS, according to Forrester.” They are also mainly male, spend more time online than non-RSS readers, technically interested, surf broadband and/or wireless, mainly read news, research products and publish/maintain blogs. (In summary… don’t you love aggregation? ;-))
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has some more interesting data (July 2005). When asked: “Please tell me if you have a good idea what the term means, or if you aren’t really sure what it means.“, and supplying the terms: “Spam, Internet cookies, Adware, Internet Phishing, Podcasting, Spyware, RSS feeds and Firewall”, the result was that RSS Feeds came in last with only 9% having a good idea, 65% not really sure and 26% never heard of it. What strikes me is that podcasting (13% has a good idea) is so much more familiar. See the report (PDF).
More info: Feeding on RSS at eMarketer, via Marketingfacts (Dutch)
One response to “RSS Statistical facts”
[…] And this is exactly why I think this is a non-discussion. RSS, RDF, Feeds, Webfeeds, Web Feeds, I personally don’t care what it’s called. I care what it does. There still isn’t a single way or application that makes it easy for John Doe to use feeds. I’ve always said that RSS/webfeeds will only break through if Microsoft will deliver a feedreader with the next Office installment. Or as it seems, that they will bake it in the OS. Untill then it will be geek-stuff only. (Did anyone see the reports?) […]