Forget RSS, We Got Bigger Issues

According to this Wall Street Journal online poll, 62% of voters do not read blogs. [Ouch.] And, only 17% read more than five blogs. [Double Ouch!] Seems to me we need to get folks to read blogs before we worry about whether or not they use RSS.

Whattaya say we all agree to tell five people this week about a few blogs we like. Then after we get these five new folks hooked on blogs, let’s agree to tell them how to use RSS to make reading blogs easier. Deal?

Comments

[Gonçalo Moura]

Blogs are still not user-friendly enough. Not even with RSS, My Yahoo!, or anything alike. Reading blogs must become as simple as reading a newspaper, for this medium to truly take off.

[George]

Many of those people who don't read blogs feel that there are too many blogs on the web already, and that it would take them quite a while to figure out what's worth reading. I just spoke with a good friend about blogs the other day, and he said: "Show me a good blog, but I want to start with one only..." So I guess we need to make sure that we don't recommend too many blogs to the folks that we want to get excited about blogs. Just look at the categories and the blog log on the Brand Autopsy... A newbie would get lost. But if you say: "Start with Seth Godin" than you can actgually excpect people to get hooked.

[Ed Brenegar]

If few people are reading blogs, and newspaper reading is down, are people even reading? If so, then what?

[Gen Taguchi]

i think it's ok if people do not read blogs regularly. i do not think majority of them will anyways (at least for a few years). however, i do think they will search more, and they end up reading more blogs there. and if you want them to read your blog, you have to get higher rankings in google/yahoo. to do so, we have to publish rss to other bloggers so they read your blogs and link to your posts. in this sense, rss is getting more and more important to "bloggers", not to all the people out there. i think rss as "press releases" (press release is, of course, to the media, not to the people).

[Phil Gerbyshak]

I think that people read more blogs than we think, they just don't realize they are blogs. If you go to a domain, and it has a bunch of articles, and the title isn't "Blog about XYZ" is that still a blog? I'd bet not to most people.

I think we are only scratching the surface of blogs and RSS. I think HR departments soon will be publishing updates to employee manuals via RSS so employees automatically get notified of any changes, IT departments will use RSS to push scheduled outages to the masses, and other areas of companies will do the same.

I do agree that it needs to get even simpler in order to reach a tipping point, and I'm not sure if blogs are the answer, or RSS is, or if it will be something altogether different.

All of this being said, I will share my 5 favorite blogs with my friends and family via e-mail this week, without mentioning the word blog. We'll see how many say "Cool site!" and how many say "What the heck is this?"

[Glenn Davies]

It is not important. How many people had cell phones initially? Let's face it, we haven't hit the tipping point on readership yet and this one may take a while. The main reason is, trust. The average newspaper reader or television news junky still trusts those mediums. Blogs and the bloggers behind them will need a little longer to gain that trust. Those of us in the midst of this new medium get it and love it. It will tip.

[Juan Pablo Tapia]

Maybe RSS are "live releases"?

[Noah Brier]

Two points on this:

1. As Phil Gerbyshak mentioned, I expect that many more people read blogs than realize. After all what's a blog at this point? Visit MovableType.org and the whole site is run on Movable Type (not surprisingly), so does that make their entire corporate site a blog? How about About.com, are those blogs?

2. I think that as we move forward this will continue and blogs will be harder to identify as "blogs". I mean right now many people use the default templates in Movable Type, Blogger, etc. which is something that helps people identify them as blogs. But as the design matures and people experiment more with the medium, I expect the idea of "blog" will fall to the background and these will just be a content-rich websites.

[Martium]

Blogs will become more widely read when:

(a) More people understand that traditional news sources are actually quite controlled (and therefore less trustworthy), and that web conversations potentially offer a more balanced view.

(b) Blogs on particular topics can be found more easily via search. Blogsearch is a good start.

[Matt]

John - please help me understand why you think it is so important that people read blogs.

[johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy)]

Matt ... to clarify my post, I never said it was so important people read blogs. However, I am inferring it is more important to get people to read blogs before we try to get people to use RSS to read blogs.

As far as your question goes ... blogging and reading blogs have become vital to me. I enjoy and learn greatly from reading other people's perspectives on all things marketing-related. I also find blogs to be a great supplement to reading biz books and biz magazines. Blogs help make me a smarter marketer. And that makes me happy. Kinda like how turkey dressing with chorizo and pecans makes you happy. (Inside joke as I know Matt.)

Matt, I know you have experienced unique things in your life. You really can impact lots of people by sharing your unique experiences through blogging. Please consider sharing your unique voice through blogging.

[Dan McComb]

The important number here isn't that 67 percent don't read blogs - it's that 38 percent do! That's crazy style, kids - almost 40 percent read blogs! Huge!

[Richard S. Singleton]

I expect the problem with the poll is people don't know what a blog is, and therefore don't know whether they read any blogs or not. The concept of blogging and the tools for blogging are important to bloggers, but they are irrelevant to the general readership. A blog is a web site. In this context, it probably does more harm than good to even use the word 'blog.'

Isn't it funny the way some web sites have started calling themselves blogs even though they aren't. Fashion.

Similarly, RSS has little intrinsic connection to blogs. Most blogs use it automatically, but the more time that passes, the more RSS is used for other things that have nothing to do with blogging. Like Podcasting, for example. Or tech support: Apple for example makes all it's email lists available through RSS, and my ISP uses it to post status reports. Or like big news sites like the BBC which use RSS but are not technically blogs, even though they are built with content management systems which are essentially fancy versions of blog software. Personally, I usually access these feeds from my screensaver, which also uses RSS.

In the future, we'll use RSS to deliver viruses and spam. When that happens, we'll know RSS has hit a critical mass. I can't wait!

[Brad Respess]

Most people don't read; of those that do read, most read for pleasure; most blogs stimulate the mind and provide more than mental pleasure. I've provided mine (lads.typepad.com) to over 100 people that would find tremendous benefit IF they read it. But of course, like most people, they don't care enough to challenge themselves. Instead, they are looking for coast mode, not growth mode.

[Laura]

Before we get TOO caught up in those survey results, I think it's just important that someone notes that this survey was conducted online and people respond to it only if they happen to visit that site. Therefore it is NOT a scientific study and those numbers are probably far from being an accurate representation of the general population.

Having said that, I think blogs will catch on, they just need time for the late adopters to start jumping on the bandwagon. I find them pretty easy to read right now but the software for hosting your own blog needs to become more user-friendly before the masses start blogging. Most of the current stuff out there requires at least some degree of HTML knowledge. I think when blog administration becomes as easy to use as email, then we'll really have something.

[Servant of Chaos]

Do you want quality or quantity? The web seems to attract a certain type of person. As Howard Barker says "because you cannot address everybody, you may as well address the impatient". Give me 10 impatient blog readers over 1000 lazy RSS feeds any day.

[olivier blanchard]

1) Most people have absolutely no idea what a blog is.
2) Most people have absolutely no idea how reading a handful of blogs regularly will enrich their lives.

Or that it will.

My first reflex is to start thinking of ways to make blogs more accessible to the masses... but I really wonder if that's a good idea.

Maybe this medium isn't meant to reach everyone, You know?

[Chris Perry]

Not sure if this is really a "bigger issue." While blogs haven't crossed the chasm with general public, and they will, it's the vocal public that exempifies blog's influence. The recent case with Sony's change of course is yet another example of vocal readers making a statement.

[Kevin O'Keefe]

Does not really matter if most people do not read blogs.

First, many of the influencers in our society do. Influence those who influence your target audience and blogs certainly do the job from a marketing & PR standpoint. 40% of journalists use blogs at least once a week - those folks influence one's audience.

Second, as RSS feeds to aggregators such as newsgator, technorati and icerocket become more important in one's internet use, getting people to read blogs becomes less important.

[Jim Seybert (on FoolsBox)]

Two comments:

1) I finally started reading blogs (about 20 a day) when someone showed me how easy it is to set up an RSS reader (I use NetNewsWire).

2) Turn the survey over. 38% of the folks say they DO read blogs. That's a huge share.

[kirsten]

and need Kirsten say more about why blogs are a poor choice for connecting with consumers and customers? blogs are not fact-checked. blogs are opinion. blogs are skewed with personal perspective. my words keep falling on deaf ears but media should be listening since I understand media and can draw meaningful comparisons. And are blogs profitable? Pocket change at most. We've represented bloggers and we know their spending limitations at best.

kindly,
kirsten