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 02:31 AM | Comments (4)
February 01, 2005
RSS Reader Statistics
Feedburner's thoughtful discussion of the state of RSS feed readers illuminates several critical issues. Two of the biggies are a) the growing fragmentation of the RSS reader market and b) the need for standardized measures of circulation.
In January 2005 FeedBurner's top 800 feeds are getting requests from 719 clients, that's up from 409 clients in September 2004. An increase of nearly 80% in the raw reader count in a mere 4 months. This reader fragmentation further exagerates problems for RSS publishers whose feed can suffer from unfriendly formatting in unfamiliar readers.
Perhaps more importantly, the absence of reliab le, industry standard circulation calculations will impede the grow of advertising in RSS. Without a reliable, trusted set of metrics to measure the risk, reach & return on their ad spends, advertisers will stick with standard online media buys.
Posted by charles at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2005
RSS: Not Just For Blogs Anymore
The recent publication of blog and RSS statistics from both PubSub and Technorati shed some quantitative light on the explosive growth of RSS beyond the blog arena. The numbers below provide some sense of the degree to which RSS extends outside the blogosphere.
PubSub recently reported tracking over 2,000,000 new RSS items per day from sources including blogs. I estimate that Technorati tracks approximately 550,000 new items a day from blogs (see calculations below). Assuming that PubSub tracks a) the same 550,000 daily blog items as Technorati and b) an additional 1,450,000 non-blog RSS items -- these numbers support the emerging consensus that RSS is growing up.
This admittedly rough estimate suggests that even in this early phase the extent of non-blog RSS is approximately 3 times that of blog-related RSS. Considering that many of the blogs Technorati tracks do not have RSS feeds, the degree to which non-blog RSS feeds surpasses blog-related feeds may be significantly understated.
Sources:
As of 1/23/05 PubSub reports:
1) Over 8 million blogs tracked & 4.6 million active sources
2) Over 2 million daily RSS items
As of 1/6/05 David Sifry of Technorati reported:
1) Over 5.5 million blogs tracked
2) Growing at 20,000 new blogs per day
As of 10/2004 Technorati reported:
1) Over 4 million blogs tracked
2) Growing at 12,000 new blogs per day
3) 400,000 new posts each day.
Based on Technorati's numbers I estimate that they track approximately 550,000 items per day as of January 2005. Assuming same average number of posts/day/blog -- 400,000 posts/day for 4 M blogs in October 2004 translates into 550,000 posts/day for 5.5 M blogs in January 2005.
Posted by charles at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)