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Of Internet Users, Only 4% Knowingly Use RSS

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'll-tell-you-why dept.

yogikoudou writes "Recent research conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos reveals that while 12% of surveyed Yahoo users know what RSS is, only 4% of surveyed Internet users use it (PDF) (and know they use it). Podcasting is also reviewed, with the conclusion that 2% of surveyed people use it. The increasing number of blogs should go with an increasing number of syndicated readers, as they are now an important part of the web." I've said it before, I'll say it again- if RSS was called SpeedFeed every user would have to have it.

30 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've said it before, I'll say it again- if RSS was called SpeedFeed every user would have to have it.

    There are a number of acronyms that can be just as "sexy" as marketdroid made-up name. Think MP3, PC or IBM. Maybe the truth is that much of RSS is hype? Either that or there's SS in the name and it's too nazi, but I won't say it because I fear Godwin's wrath.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  2. RSS wouldn't exist it if weren't for e-mail spam by michaelmalak · · Score: 3, Interesting
    In the old days (c. 2000), website updates were promulgated through e-mail newsletters. But those e-mails confused spam filters. So RSS came along.

    Why isn't RSS subject to spam? Because in RSS, the recipient pulls the information from a known server, whereas in e-mail an arbitrary sender sends the information to a known recipient.

    Now in the era of RSS, recipients have to check two places: e-mail and RSS. Thanks to e-mail spam.

  3. Overload. by IAAP · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...try it for a min or two, then dump it and move on to the next greatest thing.

    I dumped it because I was suffering from information overload. Seeing all the shit happening in the world was just increasing my stress levels. Also, so much of the information is duplicated it just wasn't worth getting. It's amazing how much is plagiarized from AP, Reuters, etc...

    1. Re:Overload. by MoonFog · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Same thing for me. Although I like to keep up with what's happening, having the same story duplicated over every news paper you're subscribing too is boring and tedious. I didn't find it any easier than using a good old browser, seriously.

  4. RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    To me it seems just as bothersome to load an rss reader as it is to load the websites in a browser, ive never understood the massive hype surounding RSS. Granted its slightly quicker to load slashdot articles from the Live bookmark in firefox, and having news headlines popup in evolution or on my xbox media center is kind of nifty but pointless.

    1. Re:RSS by zhiwenchong · · Score: 4, Interesting

      RSS is useful if you hit a lot of webpages every day. It's an efficient way of being alerted to new articles or such. Instead of spending 2 hours loading up websites and glancing at them to see if there's anything new (assuming your memory is that great to start with, otherwise you'd feel a lot of deja vu), RSS readers aggregate all the new items for you to chug through in 5 minutes.

      Reading feeds is analoguous to glancing at the headlines when reading the newspaper -- you only read the article if the headline sounds interesting. It cuts down your web surfing time significantly, or if you like, allows you to get more news in the same amount of time.

      The major of advantages of RSS are *aggregation* and *push*. Push works if one has the correct expectations of it.

      For instance, I have keyword searches on engineeringvillage2.org (a journal search engine) that return results in RSS format. I use it to track new journal publications in my area of research -- very useful for checking up on competitors too.

      The only reason I don't use Slashdot's feed is because:
      1) It takes a while for it to be updated. (there's a fairly SIGNIFICANT delay between something appearing on the front page and it appearing in the feed)
      2) it doesn't have the topic icons (which are great visual cues for filtering out articles of interest)

  5. Apathy on my part but... by CrackedButter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I know about it but don't use it because I'm not prepared to hunt down another application in order to use it. I also didn't upgrade my mac to tiger just to use Safari RSS.

    --
    Jonathanjk.com
  6. Not suprised by lamasquerade · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Am I the only one who doesn't get the (great) appeal of RSS? I've tried it in various forms (Firefox Live Bookmarks, Google Homepage, RSS plugin for Firefox...) serveral times and I always end up forgetting about it. I really only read three web-pages every day and I like to scan the entire pages, so RSS is a waste of time in those cases as the various methods of using RSS only let you see, say, 20 headlines at once and my main news page, for example, has hundreds well organised in various sections.

    The new Gmail implementation is vaugely interesting as I sometimes see something I wouldn't have otherwise seen (such as Google blog entries and stuff from other news sites I wouldn't normally visit) so I guess as a random selection it makes some sense, but not as a dedicated homepage/plugin etc. that I would deliberately load up frequently.

    So I really am not suprised by the 4% figure, the only thing that is suprising is that anybody else is suprised:)

    --

    // It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis

    1. Re:Not suprised by bbtom · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In fact once a day is absolutely perfect for RSS. Once a month is even better. I read blogs that have updates a couple of times a week. RSS saves me from going to the site when they haven't updated.

      As for Freshmeat and sites like that, what would be useful is if they could publish a personalised RSS feed. Exclude stuff you're not interested in (for instance, if you never listen to MP3s on Linux, there's no point it showing you new MP3 players).

      --
      catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
  7. They used to call it Pointcast & Channels by gbulmash · · Score: 4, Interesting
    There are a wide variety of applications that support RSS (Firefox and Thunderbird come immediately to mind) and with RSS support due in IE 7, it's coming along. But in many ways, RSS is like the old "push" hype of the late mid-90s, and push died.

    Pointcast got hot, then Microsoft and Netscape both brought out their variants on it, built into their 4.0 editions. Everyone in Internet marketing was talking about "push" (I tech edited "Marketing Online For Dummies" which came out in 1998), but it died.

    Now, this could probably be due to the fact that it was not based on XML, but had a few semi-HTML markup language variants depending on whether you were producing your content for Pointcast, IE, Netscape, etc. The people I've talked to who are hot on RSS claim that the XML and standardization of the RSS specs make this a different ballgame.

    I don't know. I'm still expecting Microsoft to "embrace and extend" so that RSS forks and RSS reader makers are scrambling to adapt to all the tags Microsoft introduces.

    But in the end, RSS is basically the evolution of "push". I don't understand what's going to drive consumers to adopt it any more than they adopted the channels concept in IE4 and Netscape 4. Perhaps growing adoption by publishers will help push consumer adoption. But after watching all the hype rise, hit a crescendo, and then drop off into a whimper with push, I'm still not going to pin my hopes on RSS achieving widespread consumer adoption.

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
    1. Re:They used to call it Pointcast & Channels by gbulmash · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why did Active Desktop / CDF / PointCast / Netcaster etc. fail?

      Because the content sucked. They worked with Disney, ABC, CNN and other big media types to provide the same sort of mind-numbing content that television provides. Compare that with the number of excellent tech blogs, sites like Slashdot and Digg, blogs by knowledgable experts in their subjects, more applications throwing stuff out in RSS/Atom (Flickr for instance).

      I worked with IMDb as a contractor from '96 through '98, then got hired on a few months after Amazon bought them and they were rolling in dough. They tried an IE4/NS4 channel, and they weren't "big media" then (maybe 16 employees worldwide - I was the second full-time hire after the buy-out and everyone before the buyout came from the pool of volunteers who built IMDb). It died too.

      What's positive about RSS, as opposed to the late mid-90s "push" craze, is that it's grown from a grass roots, hobbyist base. You don't have 5 fighting specs, each endorsed by a large player, each unable to generate a critical mass of content. It isn't one big hype machine based on a "killer app" where everyone has rushed blindly to get on the gravy train. You have a relatively solid, relatively mature spec upon which people are building, and you have a growing grass roots movement that may create that critical mass of content that shoves this over from the death knell that "push" saw to the ubiquity that text messaging has achieved.

      BUT, it's still a bit techy, both to create and use a feed. And, as the big players jump in there's a lot of opportunity for it to fork and fracture. It's young and vulnerable, and doesn't have the critical mass yet. We'll see if it overcomes the poison pills that killed "push" and survives its own growing hype.

      - Greg

      --
      Start a happiness pandemic
  8. Re:Why use RSS by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think the problem lies in RSS as an implentation rather than an idea. Syndication would be great if it truely was syndication and everything was treated equal, but once you have to deal with some people only posting headlines, some headlines + short summaries, some full stories, the lack of reliable timestamps on info, lack of consistent format (plain text? cdatad html? xhtml? etc), it just stops being worth it.

    I'd check a lot more sites if they all could be merged into one locally aggrigated portal site, but due to the way RSS works its just not really doable now. The other thing that really needs to be aggregated is site based notifications. Email notification works somewhat if you filter them all to the same place so they dont clutter, but it would be nice to either push or pull them all to one spot to check your messages on slashdot, Talk: on your wiki user page, forum replies/msgs, myspace/xanga/lj/whatever notices, and every other little thing you dont want to go out of your way to check but would like to be informed of.

    --
    Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
  9. RSS could be called Free Beer by rtphokie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and people still wouldnt use it widely. I'd venture a guess that those who do use it only have a couple of well chosen feeds.

    Personally I use it for anything but news or website update notifications. I use it to monitor bug lists and trouble ticket lists. The integration with Firefox makes it nice.

  10. Too technical by Jesus+IS+the+Devil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    RSS is just too technical for the average Joe to understand, much less care to use it.

    Second, the majority of RSS feeds are junk. Most give you a really short headline with nothing in the way of content. You still have to click to read the full story, so there isn't much draw to it.

    --

    eTrade SUCKS
  11. Re:Ironing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Why is it such an unmitigated pain in the ass to add an rss feed to firefox?

    In 1.5 you just single click the blue icon, displayed on the far right of the address bar.

  12. Re:Why use RSS by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use the slashboxes on the slashdot page quite extensively.
    It allows me to browse slash and keep ontop of the main sites I visit.

    RSS works for me in this context and I haven't ever seen the need to get a dedicated reader or investigate RSS further.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  13. Re:Why use RSS by hackwrench · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My use for IM
    1. I can take time to think before typing, and the other person won't wonder why I'm not talking to them.
    2. If I want to recall exactly what was said (and not what I thought was said, BOOM, it's right there.
    I don't use RSS directly, but I use http://www.dailyrotation.com/ which uses RSS on the back end. (the www is significant though as its use of cookies has proven a little buggy without it).

  14. Re:Why use RSS by fimbulvetr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I prefer IM over the phone. In fact, I regularly demand it instead. IM is so much more convienent because it's not an atomic action, the phone is. I do have to drop what I'm doing to answer my coworkers question. I can finish the last 10 seconds of work on my widget, then alt-tab over to what he asked. I can then reply back, he can finish his widget work and read it. Phone calls demand your immediate attention and go poorly when you can't give it. It's also a bit more convenient than email. No sending or receiving, no waiting for message delays and most importantly, I know everyone on my contact list, so it's probably not spam,I know it's pretty important, etc.

    Kopete makes instant messaging especially great. The little conversation bubble is non-intrusive and you can group chats so you only have one window instead of 12 windows for 12 conversations with 12 people.

  15. Re:Push pull by gbulmash · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "The parent was saying "it is disconcerting for non-geek members of the internet community to have this news delivered instead of going out and browsing for it."

    Then perhaps a better description of RSS is like an e-mail reader where people give you their addresses, but you don't give them yours. Each time it updates, it asks just those people you've selected "do you have any new public mail for me to read"? If the answer is yes, it downloads it and you can read it.

    - Greg

    --
    Start a happiness pandemic
  16. Re:Why use RSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You're still thinking inside of the "box" (i.e. PC).

    RSS is a little ahead of its time, but imagine a completely wireless world filled with all sorts of small mobile devices. RSS is a great way to deliver content to these devices.

    Hell, where I live I see people interfacing with 2D bar codes (via cells w/ cams) to jump on the web to grab info.

  17. where RSS is going, GeoRSS by rheotaxis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some comments here wonder what value RSS provides? RSS offers much more than syndicated news feeds, it helps control your information overload. Two examples follow. First, Dr. Dobbs article shows how to build your own RSS with Ruby to track information when certain events occur. Dave Thomas writes artcles and books about Ruby. He says "You can use RSS to collect and summarize information from your projects and from your life" in the Dr. Dobbs article.

    Second, Yahoo maps documentation says, "The XML used by the Yahoo! Maps Simple API is based on geoRSS 2.0." Here is another link about GeoRSS and worldKit, a map built using shockwave flash. You publish your map content, and GeoRSS for every point you want on the map.

    IMHO, GeoRSS is becoming a de facto standard, becoming part of many blogs, and content managment systems, like Plone. and, BTW, Good luck with all your adventures this New Year.

    --
    Software freedom...I love it!
  18. Re:Why use RSS by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like http://www.google.com/reader
    Keeping all my subscriptions on a server makes a lot of sense--I can view the same content at work or at home.
    Plus, we're talking RSS on AJAX: double your buzzword pleasure!
    The interface may be simpler than some, but I call that a feature.

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  19. And podcast is even worse by murderlegendre · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Up until recently (well, the introduction of the iPod is still in the realm of what used to be considered 'recent') the term 'Pod' has had nothing but negative connotations. Think about it:

    In traditional geek lingo, a 'pod' is a term for a person who is devoid of intelligence or basic humanity (comes from Invasion of the Body Snatchers - a great yet campy cold-war era horror/thriller). Pods, Pod People, "he seems like some kind of pod", and so forth. When I hear the term 'podcast', it immediately evokes the idea that the info therein is directed at Pods, or created by Pods. Apparently, they are directed at iPods, but since I don't own one of those, I obviously have no use for a Podcast (logical?).

    Consider that the iPod presents a method of isolating oneself from the other humans in one's vacinity. In doing so, it dehumanizes the user and all others around them. Not to put too fine a point on it - but humankind exists today because traditionally, as human beings, we were willing to interact with the others around us.

    Despite the inherent confusion, I've come to feel that the terms iPod and Podcast are very well chosen, but from the perspective of dark irony.

    --
    There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
  20. My use by shish · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So many people saying it's useless... Sure, I *could* check 200 odd webcomics, blogs, podcasts, forums, and news sites every day only to find that only one or two have updated -- but it's *much* easier to have them all merged with a single "unread items" list.

    --
    I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
  21. Re:4% is still a lot by rosewood · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe I missed it but RSS (or whatever you want to call it) seems like a bad idea for everyone. I personally don't use it.

    For example, if I take slashdot's RSS feed, often I find that the headlines aren't descriptive and I ended up clicking the link and just reading the story. Im not sure how that saved me any time then just going to slashdot.org and scrolling down and scanning the site.

    Now, some sites get past that by including some (or all) of the text of an article in the RSS feed. ... ... Well I would hope and pray that anyone who has ever tried to make $1 on the internet would see how stupid that is. Giving away content went out in 99 I think.

    RSS feeds for ars, slashdot, digg, anandtech, hardocp, shacknews, etc. just seem silly when I can just open those sites in tabs, scroll through and get the full site and everything that goes along with that.

    BUT CONVINCE ME! Say "this is where RSS really shines, not that..."

    --
    The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
  22. Re:Why use RSS by Busy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree, but not really. It's pointless trying to explain RSS to most people. It's somewhat pointless for people to use it directly, like with a reader, unless you're into that sort of thing. (Which I am)

    On the other hand, if you make a website or program with RSS built into it, it suddenly becomes something very useful, even if 96% of the people using it have no clue that it's RSS.

    I'm getting ready to do this with a website I keep for my friend's nightclub, with event lineups that will use RSS or something very similar to update a couple of other websites. When I had the idea and told him about it I got a blank stare. But once he sees it in action the point will become obvious. (The point being now he doesn't have to send updates to 3 sites anymore, just one.)

    --
    Think of someone with average intelligence. Now think 1/2 the world is dumber than that guy.
  23. Re:Why use RSS by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You're missing the point. If you go to my blog, as well as my content, you'll see current headlines from other sites I find interesting. How do you think they get there? Do you imagine I sit up every night carefully editing my pages and putting in new links? Hint: I don't. A little fragment of XSL pulls the current RSS from the sites I'm interested in, and integrates it into the page as it rebuilds it. And guess what? Those sidebars on Slashdot are just the same.

    RSS may not be interesting to you on your browser (although with plugins like Wizz RSS for Firefox you may be missing something). But whether or not you know you're using RSS, you are using RSS.

    And so you should, because it is exceedingly good stuff.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  24. RSS Feeds = 1 info point by matt_maggard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I find so useful about rss feeds is that I don't have to go visit all the websites. I don't have to open up my bookmarks. I don't have to navigate to subpages for specific content.

    With RSS, I simply load up my feed reader (Newsfire on OS X - its great) and it grabs everything without forcing me to do anything. Many of you are pointing out that with just lists of headlines in the news feed, you might as well go to the website to see the same thing. That is true, but for me it is easier to open up 1 information point and get ALL the headlines than go to a bunch of sites for the same thing. For me it is is just much more efficient. AND it provides a consistent interface - I just see the headlines. No dealing with crap designs on some sites.

    Also, I happen to be looking for a new job now and 2 job site search engines (indeed.com and simplyhired.com) allow you to search all the other job sites and then save out a custom RSS feed based on your search criteria. This saves me a ton of time because I don't have to manually do a repetitive search. Hits just come straight to me. Its great.

    The best thing about RSS is that once its set up, you no longer need to remember to check stuff. Now, this is great for non-tech people. Slashdot readers are probably more interested in control and immediacy than the average person. And setting feeds up with Safari is very easy. Any site with a feed is detected and shows an RSS logo in the address bar. Click it and (by default) it will bookmark the feed in safari or if you've changed your default reader, it will launch that app and bookmark. Simple.

    -matt

  25. ...it's because RSS isn't useful by XO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...RSS isn't really all that useful, except for monitoring people's web pages that are hardly ever updated. And if they are hardly ever updated, then why do you want to monitor them, anyway?

      RSS/ATOM gives you a wide range of crap, ranging from "nothing but an HTML link to something", to "the entire article dropped in in an easy to read format, causing you to never, ever have to visit the site that it came from".. depending on what site you subscribe to.

      I have slashdot and fark subscribed on one computer.. and I realised.. why even bother? Slashdot and Fark are updated 10-15 times per day, and their RSS feeds are completely and totally useless. About the only thing I actually -use- RSS for is to monitor two of my friends sites that are hardly ever updated.

      This is why RSS/Atom isn't being used, because it doesn't HAVE much use.

    --
    "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  26. infrequent blogs by sdedeo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, I believe the best use of RSS is for infrequently-updated blogs. My own blog I update once a week or so; I estimate -- from anecdotal reports alone! -- that about a quarter or more of my traffic comes from people using RSS-like systems. And this is for a lit-related blog, hardly a domain of super-tech-guru knowledge -- people use things like my.yahoo, I don't believe many use a local machine application.

    It seems silly to use RSS for sites like slashdot or people who write a post or more a day. You can't keep up with that, so you end up having to "manage" your RSS inbox rather heavily. On the other hand, it's a great way to keep track of the less updated blogs; instead of having to load up a whole bunch of sites over and over waiting for new content, you can just be alerted when something new comes up.

    --
    Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU