Back in August I noted a study that showed only one in 10 visitors used the RSS feed provided by blog sites. Alex Barnett now points to another study by Yahoo (PDF) released in October 2005 that shows similar numbers. Apparently there was some confusion about this report on Slashdot because people were picking up on one key number and not reading the whole report. Alex takes pains to note that in this study, 4% of users knew they were using an RSS feed, while "27% of internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology."
It’s still a big minority, and I continue to espouse the virtues of offering your readers an RSS-to-email option 🙂
Thanks to Geoff for the pointer to the Barnett page.
Technorati Tags: RSS