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February 07, 2005
The Decline of NetNewsWire and the Rise of RSS
Feedburner recently published a wonderful set of statistics on the RSS aggregator market. One of the most interesting aspects of this report, as noted by Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web, is the extreme popularity of NetNewsWire, a Mac only RSS aggregator.
Depending on how you slice it, Macintosh has somewhere between 1.8% and 3.5% of the overall pc market. In Q4 2004, Mac had 1.8% of world market sales and 3.8% of US sales. Additionally, Macintosh recently accounted for 2.7% of all online activity. Interestingly, as of 1/10/05 NetNewsWire (the most popular Mac RSS aggregator by far) has nearly 16.95% of the RSS reader market as measured by Feedburner. This disparity between overall Mac market share and Mac RSS market share is perhaps best explained by the early ad opting tendencies of Mac users. It’s no surprise that tech-friendly Mac users adopted RSS ahead of the curve.
What is perhaps more interesting is the decline in NetNewsWire’s reach over the last year. Based on the reports of two well-read blogs and supplemental data from Mark Fletcher of Bloglines (total sample size = 4401 subscribers)*, NetNewsWire held over 43% of the overall market in December 2003. Based on Feedburner's 1/10/2005 report that number is now just south of 17%.
Two forces are simultaneously working to reduce NetNewsWire's reach. First, online RSS aggregators are gaining in popularity. Second, RSS is moving out into the mainstream, well beyond the early adopting Mac crowd.
The 12/2003 numbers suggest that online RSS aggregators accounted for 19% of the market. The majority of this was made up of Bloglines at 15.5%.** The 1/10/2005 numbers indicate that online aggregators represent 39.9% of the overall aggregator market (Bloglines 32.86%, NewsGatorOnline 4.45%, and MyYahoo 2.58%). That’s more than a doubling of online aggregators in just one year.
NetNewsWire certainly lost some of its users to Bloglines and other online services. This migration explains NetNewsWire’s declining reach to a certain degree. Unfortunately, there is no available data to suggest what percentage users of online RSS aggregator are using Mac or any other platform.
However a closer comparison of the 12/2003 and 1/2005 client side numbers illustrates a more important trend: RSS market is rapidly shifting away from Mac user and toward later adopters and the mainstream.
As stated above, online aggregators made up 19% of the overall market in 12/2003. That means that 81% of the overall aggregator market was client side RSS readers. NetNewsWire accounted for 43.1% of the overall aggregator market, me aning that NetNewsWire represented 53.2% of the client side aggregator market at the end of 2003. As of 1/10/2005 NetNewsWire represented only 28.3% of the client side market.***
NetNewsWire’s declining share of the client side market (53.2% to 28.3%) is significant. Furthermore, it is important to note that no other Mac only application is stealing substantial client side market share from NetNewsWire. Rather, NetNewsWire appears to be quickly losing its overall market position to Windows users. This is clear evidence of just how far RSS has progresed through the adoption cycle.
These numbers provide a means to quantify just how quickly RSS is surging into the mainstream. As of 12/2003 NetNewsWire accounted for 53.2% of client side market – that’s 19.7 times higher than the 2.7% you would expect based on Mac’s portion of overall online activity. One year later NetNewsWire made up just 28.2% of the same market – 10.4 times higher than would be expected upon broad adoption. If this rate of decline remains constant, NetNewsWire and other Mac client apps will fall to approximately 15% of client side reach by early 2006 – with mainstream normalization (Mac clients reaching the 2.7% range) arriving sometime in early 2008. Based on historic precedent, however, the rate of change will likely accelerate, bringing RSS into primetime in the middle of 2007.
Fasten your seatbelts. The RSS future is coming at us fast.
* In December 2003 two well-read weblogs published statistics on the RSS aggregators reading their feeds. In one instance NetNewsWire comprised 37.2% of the RSS aggregators (sample size = 2519 total subscribers), in the second 51.2% (sample size = 1882 total subscribers). The weighted average of NetNewsWire usage across the two blogs was 43.2%.
** NewsGatorOnline can be estimated to account for approximately 3.5% of the market. The 12/2003 numbers lump NewsGatorOnline together with NewsGator client subscriber for a total of 5.14% of the market. Assuming the 1/2005 ratio of NewsGatorOnline to NewsGator (.0445:.0223) was the same as the 12/2003 ratio, NewsGatorOnline accounted for an estimated 3.5% of the market in 12/2003.
*** The 1/10/2005 numbers indicate that online aggregators repre sent 39.9% of the overall aggregator market (Bloglines 32.86%, NewsGatorOnline 4.45%, and MyYahoo 2.58%). That leaves the client side aggregator market at 60.1%. NetNewsWire accounts for 17.0% of the overall RSS reader market. So as of 1/10/2005 NetNewsWire represents 28.3% of the client side market.
Posted by charles at February 7, 2005 02:31 AM
Comments
Hi Charles -- good analysis.
The only thing I object to is using "The Decline of NetNewsWire" in the title, just because NetNewsWire itself is not declining -- even though it's inevitable that, as an OS X product, its share of the overall RSS-reader market will go down as RSS gains popularity.
At the same time, the number of NetNewsWire users and the number of sales continues to go up, even with more aggregators (online and desktop).
I agree that it's inevitable that it won't be the most popular desktop aggregator forever: no OS X app could be. It would be impossible, once RSS is fully mainstream. It will have to be a Windows app.
But that doesn't mean that NetNewsWire's "reach" is reduced -- not in terms of number of users. And it doesn't mean that NetNewsWire is declining as a product.
In other words, I t hink we agree about the trends, but I just don't want people to get the impression that NetNewsWire is in trouble or doing poorly, when it's doing better than ever.
Posted by: Brent Simmons at February 9, 2005 04:34 PM
i'd concur that NNW is doing better than ever - we haven't published this stats report yet (we hope to soon), but when you look at the week to week trends of circulation, we've seen an increase in feeds being consumed by NNW be 10% in some weeks across all our traffic. so that's a combination of existing NNW users adding feeds and new NNW users.
NNW was certainly one of the first RSS readers on the market, and now there are over 700, so even if RSS consumption is ever expanding, the competition for any one reader/aggregator to grab more market share is fierce.
stay tuned, when you look at the trends, there are definitely some surprises.
Posted by: Steve Olechowski at February 9, 2005 09:39 PM
Brent - I am a fan of NetNewsWire and didn't mean to disparage the product or company. In fact, there is a Mac in my household very happily running NetNewsWire!
The broader point is that the overall RSS pie is growing at an extraordinary rate. In such a market it is no surprise that NetNewsWire's business is booming - despite the fact that its overall market share has declined. The RSS tide is rising quickly and boosting the entire industry.
Looking forward to the next publication of FeedBurner stats!
Posted by: Charles at February 10, 2005 12:47 AM
A small data set from August 2004 (sample size = 154):
Bloglines - 42%
NetNewsWire - 13%
SharpReader - 6%
Newsgator - 6%
Feed Demon - 4 %
Firefox RSS Extension - 4%
see: http://www.wingedpig.com/archives/000172.html
Posted by: Charles at February 15, 2005 12:32 AM