We will continue our analysis of our blog survey results by looking into the use of RSS, and the preference for aggregators. I particularly like this section for what it says of blogger behaviour, and what it speaks to about the fractured RSS aggregator market - a surprise to me, as it may be to others.
(n=95)
71% of our users read 100 or less blogs. On the high end, we have 19% reading more than 150 blogs - I would be in this high end, given that my RSS reader fluctuates at around 350.
I was surprised to find that 19% of our users read less than 10 blogs, while 15% read less than 30. To me, the act of reading blogs is a necessary step in writing them effectively, so I expected these figures to be higher.
To understand how blog readership was correlated with the act of blogging, I cross referenced these figures with blogging experience (how long they've been blogging) and with number of blogs.
According to the survey, 49% of users who have been blogging for at least one year have at least 100 blogs in their RSS reader. This, of course, makes sense - time increases likelihood of number of blogs read, as well as written on, which we previously noted. 61% of bloggers who write on at least 3 blogs read more than 100 blogs - noting the importance of reading blogs in writing on them.
(n=95)
The use of aggregators was a little bit more variant than any other question in the survey. Although we have a strong indication of the market presence of Bloglines, FeedDemon and NewsGator, we have a very high proportion of users favoring other RSS readers. There are 16 RSS readers used only by one person, with half a dozen more used by only 2 or 3. This says to me that, despite the dominance of a few key players, people are not completely satisfied and are searching for something more specific to their needs.
Our own Lektora was in the top 5, which is satisfying, but shows a great need for growth in the market, and says something about our own attention to this product in our offering - our marketing and our blog posts need to speak more to this market.
37% of Bloglines users have at least 100 feeds populating their aggregator, while the next largest player, FeedDemon, has only 18% of users reading more than 100 feeds. Looking at the figures for all of the players, the number of feeds read does not correlate overly strongly with chosen reader, but perhaps certain readers offer more organizational abilities for larger numbers of feeds than others.
When you look at time blogging versus aggregator, you get a stronger preference for Bloglines. For those blogging 1-2 years, 28% use Bloglines; for those blogging more than 2 years, 61% use Bloglines. These are very interesting correlations.
Well, I think I could play all day mixing up these figures and figuring out some interesting things, but I think I've put forth those that speak most clearly to certain trends in blogging and the RSS market.
Related posts:
Blogging Survey - On Bloggers
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