Comments on: Who Gets What Out of Blogging? http://www.markevanstech.com/2006/08/22/who-gets-what-out-of-blogging/ Insight and Analysis from North of the Border Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:50:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Rohan Jayasekera http://www.markevanstech.com/2006/08/22/who-gets-what-out-of-blogging/#comment-1727 Rohan Jayasekera Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:06:21 +0000 http://markevanstech.com/?p=1714#comment-1727 According to the AdAge story, Jupiter says that 5% of American adults use RSS feeds, and WorkPlace Print Media says that 88% of the at-work audience doesn't know what RSS is. I haven't seen their source material, but I think the wrong questions may have been asked. Many people use blogreaders, and subscribe to blog feeds by clicking the Subscribe button, right? Now, where in that last sentence was the term "RSS"? Lots of blog pages, including yours and mine, don't use the term anywhere, for good reason: it's a technical term that end users shouldn't be subjected to. Lack of familiarity with the term may not indicate lack of subscribing. It may indicate some success on the part of those of us who avoid inflicting such terms on a public that shouldn't have to know such jargon. (And it's not even correct, since quite a few feeds use Atom instead of RSS.) According to the AdAge story, Jupiter says that 5% of American adults use RSS feeds, and WorkPlace Print Media says that 88% of the at-work audience doesn't know what RSS is.
I haven't seen their source material, but I think the wrong questions may have been asked. Many people use blogreaders, and subscribe to blog feeds by clicking the Subscribe button, right? Now, where in that last sentence was the term “RSS”? Lots of blog pages, including yours and mine, don't use the term anywhere, for good reason: it's a technical term that end users shouldn't be subjected to. Lack of familiarity with the term may not indicate lack of subscribing. It may indicate some success on the part of those of us who avoid inflicting such terms on a public that shouldn't have to know such jargon. (And it's not even correct, since quite a few feeds use Atom instead of RSS.)

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