世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, recently carried out their eighth regular survey on internet tool usage. They interviewed by means of an internet-based questionnaire 1,071 (the text says 1,071, but later calculations suggest that the sample size is actually 1,037; 1,071 seems to have been the sample size for the previous survey!) people from all over Japan towards the end of March. The sample consisted of 56.0% female, and the age breakdown was 2.7% in their teens, 23.8% in their twenties, 39.3% in their thirties, 22.6% in their forties, 9.2% in their fifties, and 2.3% sixty or older.

I have previously translated their fifth survey on tools, and in these four months the percentage of RSS reader users has climbed just 1.5 percentage points, or an increase of around 10% in four months. Although this seems like a significant relative increase, looking at the reasons why people do not use them the top answer was that people see little need for them. I also saw little need to begin with, but once I started using one I wondered why I hadn’t begun earlier. I subscribe mostly to blogs that update once every day or so; higher-frequency news sites give too much information, I feel, and using filtering might cause me to miss stuff, so I just use bookmarks for my news requirements.

Q1: Which of the following internet-related tools and services are you currently using or have ever used? (Sample size=1,037, multiple answer)

	Users	Percentage
Toolbar	765	73.8%
Desktop search	347	33.5%
VoIP	347	33.5%
Alerter service	308	29.7%
Alerter service (A second time?)	227	21.9%
RSS reader	152	14.7%
None of the above	89	8.6%

The previous survey had 89.0% of the sample using toolbars, 77.6% using VoIP, and 61.5% using desktop search. Why there has been a 20% to 30% drop in the figures is not discussed at all, so something funny must have happened to the sample chosen either this time or the last time. Note also that “Alerter service” appears twice – this is a misprint in the presented graph, and I suspect one of the two (perhaps the larger one?) should be “Instant messenger”.

Q2: Do you think you want to use an RSS reader? (Sample size=919, non-RSS users)

Definitely want to	3.6%
Want to, to some degree	32.9%
Don’t really want to (to Q3)	38.5%
Don’t want to at all (to Q3)	9.7%
Don’t know (to Q3)	15.3%

Q3: Why did you give that answer in Q2? (Sample size=584, multiple answer)

	Votes	Percentage
Little need for one	403	69.0%
Don’t know the functions of an RSS reader	133	22.8%
Readers seem difficult to use	117	20.0%
Don’t know how to install them	39	6.7%
Other	16	2.7%