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Of Internet Users, Only 4% Knowingly Use RSS
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.
4% know what the heck RSS is, is a lot.
All these Web2.0 companies thinking they're targetting the general Internet public with their RSS, podcasting etc... mashups are only targetting the high-end users of the Internet, and these are the users that only sign-up once, try it for a min or two, then dump it and move on to the next greatest thing.
I hit a couple of dozen news websites daily. Every RSS feed is different, some give titles some give summaries. Why use it.
I have tried I usually find it more cumbersome to read RSS then click on the link to articles i want to read than going to each website doing a much more through san of everything shown and opening what i want to read in tabs. There is nothing RSS provides that can't be had faster with other methods.
Maybe i just haven't found a good RSS reader yet. They all seem to me to be lacking something.
But that is only my opinion. I don't do podcasts either though I can see where those could be useful. Of course I don't listen to portable music so they don't help either.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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
... most people don't know their RSS from their elbow.
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.
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...
In my opinion, the problem with RSS adoption is not the name. It is the fact that employing RSS is really a pretty fundamental change to the way people use the internet.
Most people are used, I think, to giong online and surfing over to their usual bouquet of sites and checking those. The content provider effectively has to "pull" the content consumers in to the content.
RSS on the other hand, is "pushed" out to the recipients. Sure, people still have to surf to the site to get the feed URL, but it's still broadly a push content strategy.
I realize this doesn't sound like much of a change, but for many less sophisticated internet users, the concept of having the news come to you rather than having to go to the news is not familiar.
As an additional point, I suspect that dedicated RSS users will tend to have tens and often hundreds of feeds to sift through. Most people just don't want or can't handle that much information. As a consequence, it is not al that attractive to them.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
How many are unknowingly using it?
-- - e.m.p.t.y - --
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
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.
/. RSS feed, but most people read it from the front page. Why? because they can't be bothered with RSS and a regular web page works just as well.
/. readers prefer to reload the front page every 30 seconds, instead of waiting for the RSS feed to get updated, despite that the RSS version should theorically bring them new stories faster.
Exactly. For example, there's a
But I think the real flaw in RSS is the very concept it implements, the "push technology". People don't like information to be pushed at them. They want to retrieve (pull) it themselves. That's the same behaviour that explains why people don't like ads shoved in their mailboxes, and prefer to ask the salesmen about this or that product: the pitch is the same, but in one case, the information is asked by the customer first. That's also why
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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
The reason I don't use RSS is because the sites I visit I tend to read every story. I visit a fairly small number of blogs/newsites that I know have quality content. I tend to get most of my news from the (hardcopy) newspaper, though, so on the web I'm mainly looking at blogs. RSS is usefull if you want to sift through a lot of content (i.e. the user should have several tens of feeds for RSS to be usefull, and not read all the stories in all the feeds).
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
The whole thing just confuses the crap out of me. If I want to see what's on a site, why wouldn't I just GO to the site and see?
I hate when I hear people talking about how great RSS is because frankly, it's nonsensical as far as I'm concerned. My own web site uses RSS because it's part of the package. If I had to put any thought into making it work though it'd be off. Fortunately for whatever fraction of that 4% of Internet users who understand and use RSS who actually read my site (both of you) it's all automatic.
And 4% of a billion is still a number I'd like to see on my next paycheque. I hate when people use percentages to make numbers seem artificially low.
Poor RSS. They mean well. It's almost too bad that there's no need for it. It's a rehash of that "push vs. pull" tech we heard so much about. It's obviously going nowhere, few people understand how to utilize it, fewer people use it, nobody needs it. Unless the RSS feed is from my bank account, showing me withdraws in real time on my cellphone, I don't see myself using it either.
Why would you trust a testimonial when choosing hosting?
RSS is no more push than pressing F5 on the homepage; it's just that the RSS reader presses F5 again and again for you. If you hit the slashdot RSS url too often, you even get blocked. One of the reasons RSS isn't really that sexy is that you still have to go through a list to see of any of it is interesting, and for the full "push" effect (even though it's just automated pull) you'd have to keep your PC on all the time. RSS readers on mobile phones might change this (which makes a bit more sense since an RSS XML document will be easier to display on there than a fully fledged homepage), but only if you don't have to pay for data by the byte.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
For example, what the hell is up with firefox's use of LiveBookmark? Why is it such an unmitigated pain in the ass to add an rss feed to firefox? What is the problem with firefox's current (1.0.7) implementation of bookmarks? Okay, I guess I'm bitching here a bit about firefox, but its default implementation of rss is not yet there yet. That, and that alone, is the reason why only 2% of users are doing the rss thing.
Besides that, for some sites, clicking on a feed displays a menu with very little information. Slashdot is a good example, I can read a list of article titles via the rss feed (this article still not available), but you know, as with slashdot, I go there and scan the list and read the articles that I'm interested in, increasingly very few.
I don't know how to implement these things to improve the experience for the user, including myself. Someone with more experience in user interface design will surely have more to offer than this.
ps. The article is still not there.
Salut,
Jacques
RSS just isn't handy for news sites, but it becomes really handy for tracking for very good blogs that update seldom and/or irregularly.
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.
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
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)
...of Internet users, only 4% knowingly use ARP. However, 99.99% of Internet users do use it.
Seriously, WTF is with that "knowingly" in there, the majority of "Internet users" wouldn't know their ass from their elbow, let alone whar RSS is or what it stands for.
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!
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.
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
I set up a feed to the RSS from Slashdot when it was first available. The problem was that so many new articles get posted here, it was immediately a chore to scan all the titles for discussions of interest. I gave up in less than 24 hours, and reverted to scanning the customised home page for new articles and using the message system to check for replies to threads I was interested in. And that was just with one source; try hooking up to the BBC News feed for ten minutes and see if you can keep up! :-)
On the various bulletin board systems I follow, Slashdot being one, I find a good messaging system is invaluable: they tell me what I really want to know immediately but can't see straight off the home page, which is when someone replies to a comment I've made (ideally, with further options to pick up things like replies-to-replies in subthreads I've participated in, or other replies to comments I've replied to as well). They don't add further clutter I don't want. I doubt any simple "dump every new title to an RSS feed" approach will ever rival the power of a moderately good messaging system.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
RSS and sites like Google news, realistically make the concept of separate websites redundant. There's not really much point in slash code anymore, slashdot, fark, digg, etc etc might as well be just another blog and all blogs might as well just be one big RSS feed. All news sites might as well join in too and that goes for pretty much any site out there thats news based in any way. Pretty much everything else can go on Wikipedia and the rest can go on AmazonBay. we can make do with three websites for the entire world: one giant categorised RSS feed, one encyclopedia and one online auction and shop.
So why haven't we? (not that I want to).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Do we have stats on how many users don't know what RSS is, but use it nevertheless? How many know RSS not by name or technical function, but by the idea of I want to do X, and if I click on button Y, I can do it?
It's probably not true in this case, but a technology only reaches it's maximum exposure when most people use it without knowing it. When it just becomes something to be taken for granted.
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
...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/
I don't understand hostility to RSS. To me it's one of the best things that ever happened to the Internet. Setting up RSS feeds is not difficult, and obtaining them isn't either. If most people don't use RSS feeds, is that really such a big deal?
And, actually, the old Netnews protocol does the same job. More efficiently, using less bandwidth.
That's great, but if you're arguing that nobody uses RSS because the demand is artificially being driven by content producers, what makes you think netnews is better for real-world use, given that most Internet users in 2006 don't know what netnews is either?
"Now, you can shove your crap right onto user's machines, when you want to." It's about making the Web into a broadcast medium.
Push technology *was* about making the Web a broadcast medium. RSS is not. PointCast and Backweb sucked eggs through a straw. I was tasked with evaluating push for an organization that had a lot of money to spend on cutting-edge Net technology. In the end the single biggest thing that killed push for us was that the apps were absolute resource hogs. It was virtually impossible to get anything else done while they were running. Something that should have been lightweight and nonintrusive became something you had to manage every few minutes.
RSS is a means by which I can quickly skim through a wide variety of information sources that I set up according to my own needs. I actually have more control over how I obtain information using an RSS reader like NetNewsWire than I do by moving from site to site in a browser. For one thing, there is far less extraneous visual crap to manage. If I already know what a site is offering, I don't want to have to see the marketing language on the home page every time I simply want some new information. I can always bounce over to the site and explore further.
I wouldn't call RSS perfect, but it allows me to obtain news and opinions from sites I like about the topics I am interested in far more efficiently than I could if I bounced from website to website in a browser. It's nothing like broadcast, which is about shoving the whole damned thing in your face. RSS provides flexibility and puts power in the hands of the user.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
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.
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