Keith Erskine [08.19.05 11:03 AM]

I can imagine the response to the email the VC's are getting after forwarding this post to their blog/rss companies. "Well...ok, its only 11%, but that means we have a tremendous upside potential in getting the remaining 89%."

Maybe O'Reilly should have a "Moms get in free when accompanied by their registered son/daughter" policy for all their conferences. Then you could have a "Moms" survey for all presentations that would ask two questions:

1) Did you understand anything this presenter was talking about?

2) If yes to #1, do you think it would make your daily life any easier? Or make life easier for your son/daughter so they'd have time to call you a little more often.

  Jeff Clavier [08.19.05 11:03 AM]

Tim> You are confusing Bill (who wrote the post) and Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, that invested in del.icio.us.

Tim responds: Thanks, Jeff. I edited the post to correct the error. Bill does not equal Brad. I even know Brad, but don't know Bill :-( Left your comment here for those who saw the original.

  Jeff Clavier [08.19.05 11:51 AM]

Tim> I am your opposite: I don't know Brad, but know Bill well. Great VC, guy and blogger.

Keith> I am on the same line of thoughts than yours, and ventures (in my own post) that the results are partially due to the closed questions that were asked. Many people use RSS without knowing, and that's what is great about it.

  Dan Ancona [08.19.05 03:08 PM]

I'm not sure I get how this is relevant: how much does the average web user know about http? RSS is a protocol, not a brand!

  David Megginson [08.19.05 03:43 PM]

It would be interesting to see a similar survey giving the percentage of web users who have heard of HTML (HTTP isn't quite fair, because it appears in the URL at the top of the browser).

  Anita Campbell [08.19.05 07:06 PM]

Hmmm. There are other important data points to consider here:

First, RSS is not something limited to blogs. Every major media site, news outlet and publication worth its salt now offers RSS feeds. Even government agencies like NASA and the Small Business Administration offer RSS feeds.

Second, corporations have started issuing important announcements and information via RSS. Press releases, customer service alerts, and other important information is increasingly available via RSS. PR Newswire offers RSS. And believe me, many more large corporations, small businesses, and business service providers like PR firms that do not currently have RSS feeds, have plans in the works.

Third, the major search engines like Yahoo and Google now track RSS feeds. And of course, Ask Jeeves owns an RSS search engine (Bloglines). And Microsoft is including RSS capabilities in its next Windows/Explorer version. I don't think this is all being done on a lark -- RSS will play a major role in search in the future.

Fourth, most blogging software automatically generates RSS feeds and offers RSS autodiscovery. Sometimes new bloggers or those who aren't very hands-on bloggers aren't familiar with RSS, but to suggest that only technical blogs routinely have RSS feeds is not my experience. Indeed, I tend to live among the business blogs rather than the technical blogs, and I can assure you that any business blogger that's been at it for more than a few days and who is hands-on knows what RSS is. Sometimes you will find business people who are not hands-on (heck, sometimes they even have webmasters set up their blogs and ghost bloggers from Marketing write them!) and so they don't know about RSS. But then those executives probably wouldn't know about HTML or Dot Net or distributed networks or Apache servers or or or or.... They hire people who *DO* know those things.

  Os [08.19.05 07:31 PM]

OK. I'll bite. I'm a geek (mostly). I know what RSS is but I quit using it to read blogs. I used it for a week or two and then said to my self "So what's the big deal?" I might as well just have a bookmark folder of blogs I like and visit them when I want. Also, it seems that RSS greatly increases internet traffic (lots of articles have noted this lately).

So again, I'll pose the question: What's the big deal about RSS? Am I the kid calling the Emperor naked or am I really missing something here? Please enlighten me.

  Busty [08.19.05 07:38 PM]

I'm not surprised a large amount of bloggers don't know what RSS is. Isn't that the point of many, many bloggers -- to not know the tech, but just be able to post? I agree with Anita, Bloglines and MS will offer the benefits of RSS and probably that same 66% will use it and not even know.

  Peter Hoven [08.20.05 08:00 AM]

I have been using RSS to surf the web for almost a year. The feeds I subscribe to are the way I find web pages to use. When I get caught up with all my feeds, I am not even sure what websites I should go to anymore.

The only sites I access directly are some sports related sites that aren't using RSS.

But I am a geek. We need to make subscribing to RSS so simple my mother could do it. I loved the comment above about bringing mothers to VC presentations to see if they understand what is being talked about.

  Peter Semmelhack [08.22.05 05:42 AM]

How about abandoning the geek-speak acronyms?? Give it a name that means something, speaks to its value/what it does, etc. and maybe it will fair better. Sony could have called the Walkman the Mobile Personal Stereo (MPS!).

  Steve Peters [08.22.05 11:06 PM]

I'm not surprised with those numbers at all. I recently overheard a conversation between various IT workers who weren't really sure what a blog was. I'm certain that most of my extended family do not know what a blog is and certainly do not know what RSS is. I think I explained what RSS was one night to my wife when she was having a case of insomnia, which I quickly cured.

More seriously, however, why would a typical user want to use RSS? They can surf their typical sites quickly to see the recent changes on a site. Although VCs would hope for more, I cannot imagine that a typical person visits more than between six to ten sites regularly for their content. More than that and people are likely to start seeing repeating content and will sone choose one site over the other. For interaction between sites, I do believe that RSS is the way to go. Finding RSS content is also much easier than when I first inveatigated RSS back in 2000. It's quick and easy content that adds value to a site. I don't think, however, that the typical person will care if the Small Business Administration has an RSS feed or not.

  Vanessa Williams [08.23.05 10:55 AM]

I was a news junkie in college. I used a customized Yahoo page to get news, but was frustrated with the lack of choices. I decided to use my personal home page at school to build my own news page using RSS feeds. Not many reputable news organizations had RSS feeds in 2002. Nevertheless, I found enough to even
use categories like political, tech, and sports.

Now I am amazed at how many mainstream sites have RSS feeds. They're everywhere! Now I can grab a
feed, run it through my web part maker, and display it on our SharePoint portal. It takes
practically no effort.

My guess is that less than 11% of folks in my company (or even in my IS department) know anything about RSS. But, guess what? They get the latest headlines displayed everyday on our portal home page. No one knows it's RSS, but they sure do use it and like it.

  Axel Hayden [11.16.06 10:09 PM]

Pop trio Atomic Kitten will reform to play a concert in support of jailed Liverpool football fan Michael Shields...

  James [09.06.07 08:42 AM]

I teach a class @ Colorado State University (CSU). I took an informal poll in the class asking the students if they had heard of RSS feeds. Out of 100 students only 5 said that they had even heard of RSS feeds. Of those that had heard of RSS - none had any idea about how to benefit from using syndication.

Change is a slow process...