Nielsen reports RSS users visit news sites more

by on November 26, 2005

Over on the CyberJournalist site they are reporting on a new report from Nielsen/NetRatings that says that RSS users are significantly more engaged in online news than non-users, visiting an average of 10.6 news sites compared with 3.4 news sites for non-users and also visit three to four times more frequently.

I bet that RSS users are more frequent users of all sites, not just news sites. After all, if you are trying to keep up with more than 10 sites of any type it’s far more productive to do so in RSS. The news sites were the first, though, to really go for RSS in a big way, so I’m sure they’ll lead the trend.

  • For sure RSS users visit sites more often. I have my RSS client, NetNewsWire, open all the time and will often visit a site as soon as I see an update. Much easier than visiting a site only to find that there is no new content.

    But I do however feel bad for the extra load that us RSS users may place on servers. My refresh has been set to 60 minutes - what's yours? Actually would be quite cool if in your website you could specify to the RSS client that you want it to refresh at a specified interval.
  • Hasan
    What's an "rss"?
  • Hasan: do you need me to teach you how to use a search engine?
  • @Hasan
    Really Simple Syndication

    more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss
  • Christopher Coulter
    That's a stupidly flawed survey, they have no control group. Have you ever thought that news hounds, themselves, just use RSS more? Not that RSS makes you a news hound? And anyone that is a REAL news hound, knows that half of news isn't EVEN in the feeds.
  • Christopher: actually now that Google News has RSS for all of its news, I don't think the percentage is as high as you might think it is.
  • Christopher Coulter
    Ummm hahhaha. And to think you used to call yourself a journalist, as even with everything Google, Lexis/Nexis, CyberAlert, CARMA, BurrellesLuce, Cymfony, Echo Research, and Lawrence Ragan, throw at you, you are still missing at least 50% of the 'news'. It's called, reporting, you may have heard of that, yes? If it is already out there, it's not news, and if it is, it needs additional info or analysis to make it news again. Sadly, lottsa journos going blogger Wolf Pack too.

    Who is CARMA? Who is Mark Weiner? What is Cymfony Dashboard? Who is Katie Delahaye Paine, what tool do they make, and why does she matter? Do you read the Bulldog Reporter? Who is Jon Greer? What is VMS? (it's not what you think). Who is Judith Turner Phair? Who is BurrellesLuce and what do they do? What does West Glen do? These are all easy questions to any real Journalist/PR/Media-savvy type, and not just the Google prompt slash RSS bottom-feeders.

    You know, you could learn something from me sometime, if you weren't so stuck your blog thicket.

    Do check out newsraider.com tho, nice little tool, site RAIDER, not just feeds.
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