I’m tempering my zeal for RSS with a dose of statistics. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion points out the most recent Ad Age Interactive Fact Pack. Looking through, it offers some insight into the demographic profile of RSS users. We’re wildly skewed male, and our demographic fits the profile of early adopter. The report neglects statistics on RSS awareness, which I feel is the key statistic for the market. In October 2005, Yahoo/Ipsos released an enlightening RSS white paper, which showed that only 12 percent of the US online population was aware of RSS, and only 4 percent of the US online population stated use of RSS. The optimist in me wants to believe these numbers are inching out, but unfortunately the Ad Age report doesn’t address this particular facet. Anyone know of any number that are more recent than Yahoo’s?
Tags: media, rss, statistics
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
What they may be missing is that many people are “using” RSS without knowing it when they visit websites that publish syndicated content.