RSS and Consumer Web Applications

Channeled through John Heilemann, Martin Nisenholtz lays out the numbers about RSS and Web2.0. I've been an RSS true believer since Fresher jumped on the new standard in 1999. However, consumers just want web sites they can surf. Used as infrastructure, RSS and other web services make those sites better, but that's the extent of web services' consumer-relevance for now.

And even RSS newsfeeds, which the Times adopted early, are still "a niche," Nisenholtz says. (In June, RSS feeds generated 12.2 million pageviews for the site out of a U.S. total of nearly 295 million.) "RSS is still very techie," he says. "Most people outside the business are totally unaware of it."

For Nisenholtz, making all this stuff appealing and accessible is a real challenge. "We touch 25 or 26 million people a month," he says, "and a very minimal number of them are technologically savvy.... Our median age online is 44 or 45 years old. So we have to find ways to bring people into the loop who don't know what a tag cloud is."

The more crowded the Web2.0 bubble gets, the more important it's going to be to remember what users are actually willing to use. For MyBlogLog, helping you find bloggers and readers that you'll love must remain as easy as clicking on a face. All sorts of great web services for developers will support and emerge from that goal, but click'n'surf, click'n'surf is all we can ask of our users.

[via fred]