Do real people actually use RSS feeds?

Peter Erickson — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:14:23 -0500

Aren't they still mostly undiscovered by anyone not a blogger or a journalist? People look at me funny when I bring us RSS feeds in public --- which is not to say I have any idea how people live without them. (I use the Wizz RSS reader, a Firefox extension, it's awesome.)

Arguably I think a better metric for campaign blogs is the number of comments it draws, the general liveliness of the comment thread, and more interesting for me, whether there's community interaction and dialogue going on there. For an example, on the Obama HQ blog, there are pretty regularly a couple hundred comments on each blog post. I would guess that it's very well read. But more interesting, some people seem to know each other, come back every day to engage with the same people, be developing a sense of community.

My RSS Feeds Don't Lie: Candidate Blogs are Boring

Joshua Levy — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:44:55 -0500

According to the stats on Google Reader and Bloglines, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, and Barack Obama have the most RSS subscribers of all the presidential candidates. But there are comparatively few subscribers compared to users of social networking sites and YouTube.

After the jump, check out some snappy charts that show that, while some candidates are using RSS more than others, no one is using it to its full potential. Maybe the problem isn't the technology but the content.

techPresident - My RSS Feeds Don't Lie: Candidate Blogs are Boring - Comments

Do real people actually use RSS feeds?

My RSS Feeds Don't Lie: Candidate Blogs are Boring