Not enough RSS subscribers, Drazen says

by on November 27, 2005

Drazen Dotlic asks how popular is (really) RSS?

He points out that on NewsGator there are only 814 subscribers to my RSS feed and on Bloglines I only have about 900. He says that these numbers aren’t enough to care about. Especially when you consider the hundreds of millions of people who have computers.

Ahh, ye olde “where’s the ROI?” argument, only in new clothes.

Let’s study the problem. Let’s say we surveyed 1,000 people. Let’s say that only 3% read RSS feeds. So, that’s 30 people, right?

Not many, right? Well, here we go.

Of those 30 people, I’d bet 25 also have a blog of their own. We call those “influencers.” Or, “connectors.” Or “mavens,” if you read Seth Godin.

Anyway, let’s say that each of those people have 1,000 blog readers. Now, that’s not uncommon. I know a few people who read my blog who have 250,000 readers A DAY on their blogs.

So, that’s 25,000 people.

Now, let’s turn it around. If the folks who run the Consumer Electronics Show asked you “would you like to keynote our conference?” Would you turn them down? No. Why not? Because you recognize the economic power of talking there. That’s why Bill Gates does that every year.

Now, I’ve been to the CES. How many people are in the audience? Maybe 1,000.

So, now, you gonna turn down an audience of 25,000? That sounds like a fireable offense to me.

Oh, and remember who reads me? Walt Mossberg. So, is that one reader or millions? Don’t know who he is? You should do your homework.

Try telling your marketing director that he shouldn’t do a press tour to visit Walt and see how long you last. Go ahead. I dare you.

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Another way to look at it? Talk to Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords. A few weeks ago he was featured in a major midwest newspaper. Had a picture on the front page of the business section. Glowing review. Had only four downloads of his product. 200,000 circulation newspaper!!

A year ago Buzz was in a major USA national newspaper. I won’t name it here, but it has millions of circulation. He had somewhere around 50 downloads. When I linked to his product? He had 400.

So, go ahead and tell me that the blog/RSS audience doesn’t matter.

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Another example? Talk to the guy who started Riya. He says blogs are more important than being in the Wall Street Journal.

Still don’t believe me? Well, fine. But just be happy I’m not in charge of your being employeed.

  • Hi Bob,

    As usual, you are an interesting read. I agree 100% that RSS is important.

    However, most blog writers I know would have about a dozen readers per day.
  • You got it right when you talked about Buzz & ActiveWords. Being there in trade shows & distributing pamphlets/brochures, giving interviews to newspapers/TV don't count much now (for Web 2.0 markets, its even more so).

    The big media pick us up only after we get popular in the blogosphere. See Dr. Jo Twist of BBC talk about it here - http://www.lewispr.com/blog_seminar_2005/

    Sez her day begins by reading Reuters, Associated Press AND the 122 feeds!! she subscribes to. And she's candid to accept that the journos increasingly get their stories from blogs.
  • Robert,

    you should have looked at the numbers more carefully. What I show is that you actually have disproportionally HIGH number of readers compared to others. Your old feed has 18 THOUSAND readers, many just haven't moved yet.
    It's not that you are not popular, it's that VMWare has only 1 reader (apparently me) over RSS. I am also on their mailing list and suspect they have many, many more but that's not RSS. Don't know who they are? They make virtualization software (think Virtual PC and Virtual Server from Microsoft, only faster and on more platforms).
  • Well, this counts all your start.com subscribers as a single subscriber. Same for all the other web-based aggregators out there.
  • Christopher Coulter
    I don't think he will ever learn. Yah'd need a jackhammer pounding for more than a year to barely break thru that skull.

    You never place bets on one table, and as far as the 'RSS/Blogs are more important than newspapers argument'...look at how much attention, and press Firefox got from that one NYT ad, it still pays off to this day. I seriously hope the Firefox people, play that card again in the 1.5 blitz. Someone at Mozilla doesn't have their head buried in the blog geek lands, thank goodness.
  • Robert,

    You say Mossberg's name like he's magic. A smart marketing director knows this just isn't true. If I'm doing something in the consumer space, absolutely I talk to Walt. If i'm doing something for better federated identity management, or a new filesystem, then Walt's about as useful as a third nipple, because in the IT space, he's not so important.

    No tool does everything perfectly. One day, MS, (and you) will learn that.
  • Here's a question: how hard is it really to produce an RSS feed? If you're using one of the modern blog tools or a decent CMS, it can't be too difficult to produce an RSS feed and insert it correctly for the aware users/readers out there to find it. How much I is there in the ROI to produce such a simple document, anyway?
  • Wally
    Woah! Double counting! 25 bloggers each with 1000 readers doesn't make a 25,000 market!

    W.
  • You make a really great point here, Robert. People are often mistaking quantity for quality and they fail to understand the power of influencers OR the issue of 'delayed power.'

    It reminds me of a time when I was advising a client, trying to get them to focus more on the college market. They argued with me "But we make all our money from 30somethings, not 18 and 20somethings!

    Obviously, they were missing two key points:

    1) Get college kids to adopt a product or service now, and they're likely to use and recommend it at their workplaces when they graduate. Focus on a small liberal-arts college with a history of uber-powerful graduates and watch your influencing pay off in spades in 5 years. ("But 5 years, Adam... we're not on a 5 year plan!")

    2) College kids are often both early adopters AND major influencers. I doubt Napster, for instance, initially spread like wildfire due to adults in the workplace. No, it was probably from college kids.
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