In October, 2005 Yahoo released a whitepaper titled ?ÄúRSS?ÄîCrossing into the Mainstream?Äù that detailed the results of a recent RSS survey that they had sponsored.¬? The following are the key findings:

• Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.
• 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.
• 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.
• Even tech-savvy ?ÄúAware RSS Users?Äù prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).
• My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.

If that weren?Äôt shocking enough, we have another survey that says only 11% of blog readers use RSS to monitor blogs.¬? For someone who couldn?Äôt live without Bloglines or NewsGator to read his favourite blogs, I’m blown away.¬? I just assumed that RSS had a much higher penetration rate.¬? To be sure, RSS is exciting technology that will change the way people receive information on the internet, but given the findings of the above mentioned studies, the current hype surrounding RSS is unfounded.

The conclusion that many experts in the industry are saying is that RSS is just not user friendly enough in its current form for mainstream users. ¬?Fair enough.¬? I have to believe that someone is going to be coming up with a fix for that pretty quickly.¬? RSS is simply too powerful to be limited to reading headline news in MyYahoo!

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