Let me put the average user’s experience into perspective for you…
What RSS is Really Good For
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Gypsy Bandito is the personal blog of CT Moore, a writer, consultant, and speaker who focuses on digital culture, marketing, and branding. His work has been featured in print, online, on television and radio, and featured in the press. Find out more here...
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I’ve read some bloggers saying that they have hundreds of blog feeds in their reader. I have around 30 and sometimes I think thats too much.
With regards to RSS count, it’s a quick way of displaying how popular your site is. It can be useful in some respect because it shows bloggers that its worth subscribing to your blog etc…unfortunately a lot of bloggers will only subscribe to blogs with high rss counts. For me, the most important thing a high RSS count does is encourage advertisers to work with you. :)
Kevin, I complete agree with you. RSS readers are a great way to valuate a blog. I like to think of them as a measure of demand.
What I’m concerned about is that this only really applies to tech/geek oriented blog.
The average user has no desire to follow more sites than they can reasonably surf in a short period of time. The only time, then, that RSS is going to reach them is when they have a “news aggregator” on their Google, MSN, or Yahoo “home page.”
I agree with that. I got my friend to start using netvibes as he checks a lot of golf blogs and he loved it however most people are still not being exposed to it. I do think its on the increase though. Major sites are starting to place more rss links and even social networking links (for example BBC)