Even though RSS adoption already reached 12% of the U.S. online population, according to Jupiter Research, the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project report still finds that only 9% of Americans online have a good idea of what RSS feeds are.

65% are not really sure, and 26% really have no idea. The margin of error is plus/minus 3%.

Further breakdown of the report tells us that ...

a] 12% of men and only 6% of women have a good idea of what RSS feeds are.

b] The same goes for 12% aged 18+29 and 5% aged 65+.

So what does all of this tell us?

a] It's easy to conclude that although people do not have a good idea of what RSS feeds are, they might still be subscribing to feeds via MyYahoo and other mainstream services that integrated RSS in to their content consumption platforms, without really going to great lengths to explaining to people in detail they're subscribing to RSS feeds or explaining to them what RSS feeds are.

To most users this doesn't matter anyway. Consequently, the Jupiter Research numbers seem to be on the mark, if not underestimated.

But it's clear that a lot of RSS education is still needed, and that RSS will really grow once it's implemented in Internet Explorer, becoming as common as bookmarks, for example. Once that happens people really won't need to know what RSS is and how to use it --- it's going to become intuitive.

b] Right now, men are the prevailing RSS readership force, which should give you some guidance towards preparing RSS content and promoting your RSS feeds.

c] It's also no surprise that the younger generation is more prone to subscribe to RSS feeds than the older generation, which means that sites targeted at youth are really doing themselves a disservice if they're not providing content via RSS.

d] And finally, the report shows that while we still have some ground to cover, the market is still wide open for those wanting to introduce unique services based on RSS and for marketers looking to take advantage of this channel, before the market becomes saturated.

The report summary is available in PDF here.