RSS reader awareness and usage in Japan

What Japan Thinks RSS subscribers graph

Here’s a subject that I haven’t seen a survey on for a while; goo Research used to do a regular monthly survey up until last year when they dropped it and replaced it with a Wikipedia one. The topic, as reported on by japan.internet.com, was RSS readers.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 11th of March 2008 1,100 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the sample were male, 12.0% in their teens, 22.7% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, and 27.6% aged fifty or older.

Pictured above is my statistics from my RSS feed at FeedBurner for Thursday the 15th of May 2008, my highest ever susbscriber count of 1,991; to each of you I say thank you very much!

I couldn’t blog without RSS - I use Google Reader, and for example to find news for my Trusted Computing blog I have subscribed to half a dozen Google blog and news searches, so whenever a new story appears I get an automatic reminder. On the other hand, for this site half my sources do not offer feeds, which is a bit of a pain.

Research results

Q1: Do you know what an RSS reader is? (Sample size=1,100)

Yes 32.2%
Just heard the term 34.8%
Never heard of it 33.0%

From when this question was was last asked a year ago, awareness has raised 27 percentage points to the current figure of 67.0%.

Q2: Have you used an RSS reader? (Sample size=1,100)

Currently using (to SQs) 14.3%
Used to use (to SQs) 8.6%
Never used 68.6%
Don’t know if I have 8.6%


Q2SQ1: What kinds of RSS readers have you used, are you using? (Sample size=251, multiple answer)

  Votes Percentage
Web-based reader 176 70.1%
Browser built-in reader 72 28.7%
Separately-installed reader 57 22.7%
Other 7 2.8%
Don’t know 7 2.8%

Q2SQ2: What do you think about sites that do not offer RSS feeds? (Sample size=251)

All sites should offer it 7.6%
If possible I’d want it offered 45.0%
Not bothered whether sites offer it 30.3%
Don’t want them to offer it 0.8%
None of the above 16.3%

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, or check out my weekly newsletter. Thanks for visiting!

Read more on: ,,,

Google
 
Web whatjapanthinks.com

Related articles:

  • Still less than one in five Japanese web users are also RSS users
  • Almost nine in ten Japanese interneters use Google
  • goo’s 13th RSS Survey: only one in eight Japanese users
  • RSS readers still not penetrating Japanese market
  • 4 Comments »

    1. Tudza said,

      May 18, 2008 @ 09:26

      This came up in this weeked Life Hacker RSS feed.

      http://lifehacker.com/390619/best-rss-newsreaders

    2. Nick Ramsay said,

      May 19, 2008 @ 17:26

      Q2SQ2’s answer of “None of the above” has me completely baffled!

    3. Ken Y-N said,

      May 19, 2008 @ 22:24

      Nick, so was I! Not sure what the difference between that and “not bothered” was. Perhaps it’s that someone wants some sites to offer it and not bothered about others. For example they might really want a news feed from their local paper, but see no need for 2ch or mixi RSS.

    4. Ex-podcast listeners outnumber current audience » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,

      May 26, 2008 @ 22:54

      […] bit like when we looked at RSS readers two weeks ago, today we see in this survey from Marsh and reported on by japan.internet.com that […]

    RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI

    Leave a Comment