Hard-core Bloggers, RSS Marginal and Podcasting Overhyped

MarketingVox reports about BlogAds' second annual survey of blog readers:

"Only 12 percent of the blog reading audience said it used RSS always or often.

The recent fad of podcasting appears to be much overblown, with this very early adopter audience indicating almost no one actually listens to the audio readings of commentary. Three percent said they listened to one podcast per week. Two percent said they listened to a couple. The people indicating they listened to more than that were two few to make a blip on the graph."

Before you jump the gun know that BlogAds surveyed 30,079 blog readers, which is not a small number. They haven't done any sampling to make sure their results are applicable to the entire blog reading audience, but still ... 30,079 is relevant.

a] What does this mean for RSS marketers?

Nothing much, really. RSS is still young, but is growing exponentially. Since about 5% (6 million) of all Americans are using RSS, it's no surprise that only 12% of the blog reading audience does. 12% is actually quite high and might show that RSS is growing exponentially.

b] How about podcasting?

Yes, podcasting is great, but we have to admit it: although voice can be fine, most how-to and newsy information still relates better to text. I'm really not surprised that most people don't actually listen to podcasts ...

c] Blog, blogosphere or the Web?

Technorati reports that they're seeing about 30,000 - 40,000 new weblogs being created each day, depending on the day. True, alot of it is due to spam blogs, but that's not the point.

With so many blogs being created every day, do you think that most internet users really know their reading a blog, or even care?

Whether hard-core bloggers like it or not, blogging is becoming "integrated" with the "ordinary" Web. Once there are more blogs than other sites, the "ordinary" Web and blogosphere become one, at least in the eyes of the users.

At the end of the day, blogs are "just" websites, nothing more nothing less.

Why is this important and how does it relate to RSS? If 12% of the blog reading audience says that their using RSS, and we presume that most of them don't even know they're reading blogs, we can easily presume that the RSS audience is growing with astounding speed.

A simple deduction with many flaws, but at least the general concept of the idea should be able to hold its own:)