世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com, in conjunction with goo Research, published the results of the 9th regular monthly survey on RSS usage. 1,013 members of the goo Research monitor group from all over Japan replied to the private internet-based survey. 56.2% of the sample was female, 2.5% were teenagers, 22.4% in their twenties, 40.6% in their thirties, 23.6% in their forties, 8.3% in their fifties, and 2.7% aged sixty or over.

I can’t say I’ve ever spotted an RSS feed with adverts in it, even though there is a Google program for AdSense for this, and there is another service whose name escapes me right now that offers a similar service. As for visiting sites with feeds, I only do so if I feel the need to comment on a post or look at who might have commented on it. Looking at my log files, I can tell from my LiveJournal feed that just 5% of the readers actually visit my site!

First, the basic stats. Barely a third (34.4%) even knew what an RSS reader was, and just over half of them (16.8%) had actually ever used one, 2.1 percentage points up from last month. However, only three-quarters of them (12.7% of the total sample, or 129 people) were currently using one. The following questions are based on these 129 users.

Q1: How many RSS feeds are you subscribed to? (Sample size=129)

	Votes	Percentage
Five or less	60	46.5%
6 to 10	33	25.6%
11 to 20	14	10.9%
21 to 30	11	8.5%
31 to 50	2	1.6%
51 to 70	3	2.3%
71 to 100	2	1.6%
101 to 150	1	0.8%
151 to 200	1	0.8%
201 to 300	0	0.0%
301 to 500	1	0.8%
501 or more	1	0.8%

I personally subscribe to 19 feeds, including my own.

Q2: Do you visit the actual sites whose RSS feed you have subscribed to? (Sample size=129)

Often visit	20.9%
Sometimes visit	55.8%
Don’t often visit	15.5%
Almost never visit	7.8%

Q3: Since subscribing to the RSS feeds, how has your frequency of visiting the original sites changed? (Sample size=129)

Increased	29.5%
Not changed	51.9%
Decreased	18.6%

Q4: What do you think about adverts in RSS feeds? Choose the answer that is closest to how you think. (Sample size=129)

I welcome them	2.3%
If they are related to the contents of the feed, I welcome them	10.1%
OK as long as they don’t get in the way	62.8%
They’re unpleasant, but they can’t be avoided	17.8%
I would unsubscribe from feeds with adverts	7.0%