Does Anyone Read Blogs?

Many might read my posts and think I am anti everything Internet. In fact, I am anti hype. And thus, like to poke holes into the hype of the day while illustrating the opportunities.

Only 12% of the Internet read RSS. And...

A majority of Americans do not read political blogs, the online commentaries that have proliferated in the race for the U.S. presidency, according to a poll released on Monday.

In fact, many more people do not know that they are reading RSS and blogs. They just do not know it. Furthermore, where does a blog, RSS and a traditional website begin and end? And there my friend is the opportunity!

Comments

[Evergreen Colorado Real Estate]

Great points - I have posted similar comments on activerain (I even think activerain is mostly a place where agents can bitch to each other) At best a place to help with SEO. Great blog site btw.

Dania

[chris frerecks]

Hey Tim.

I'm explaining RSS, RSS Readers and 'the direct marketing capability of a blog' so often that I can wholeheartedly agree.

Curious, where did you get the 12% figure?

Chris

[Coach Tim SEO]

Thanks Chris for calling me out!

I was lazy. I have heard the number bantied about forever but never looked it up. Talk about memes!

So doing some fancy digital algorythmic research on my silicon based processor (I Googled it!) I found that Yahoo ran a study. Which is interesting because they were first really with My Yahoo to use RSS and actually crawl because of it.

However, the study was a bit diferrent than the way I quoted it.
http://rss.weblogsinc.com/2005/10/07/yahoo-study-of-rss-adoption/
" 12 percent of the Internet population is aware of RSS technology by that name, and a bare 4 percent claim to use RSS. Predictably, the actual usage number is higher (27 percent), and represents the dichotomy between aware usage and unaware usage."

This 27% is that other that just do not know it, I was referring to in the post. I intuitively believe that this number should be higher, although how would anyone be able to really measure something that you are not aware of?