1. Web-based (e.g. Bloglines, Google Reader, Rojo) 55% (495 votes)

2. Desktop (e.g. FeedDemon, NetNewsWire) 18% (160 votes)

3. Start page (e.g. Netvibes, Pageflakes) 14% (125 votes)

4. Browser (e.g. Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE, Flock) 7% (62 votes)

5. Portal-based (e.g. MyYahoo, ThePortNetwork) 2% (21 votes)

6. Other (please comment) 2% (18 votes)

7. Email-based client (e.g. Thunderbird, Newsgator) 1% (11 votes)

8. I subscribe to emails from individual blogs 0% (3 votes)

Even though desktop RSS Readers are second-most popular, only 18% of the poll respondents use desktop readers as their primary means of accessing RSS feeds - well behind the 55% who use browser-based readers like Bloglines and Google Reader. A quick check of my site's Feedburner stats confirms that desktop readers are in the minority. In case you're wondering, Bloglines and Netvibes are most used by R/WW readers - although note that Google Reader stats are not currently counted by Feedburner and also Rojo has been temporarily removed. So Feedburner is under-counting RSS subscribers currently.

Browsers are becoming more popular too, with 7% - and this is bound to increase when IE7 hits full effect later this year.

Interested in your thoughts on these trends - please add to the discussion in the comments below. Also here is the poll, which we'll leave open for a little longer...

The Pluck RSS Reader is shutting down, according to a message posted on the Pluck website:

"All versions of Pluck's RSS readers for Internet Explorer, FireFox and Pluck's web edition will be discontinued on 1/5/2007. The RSS Readers have served our community of end users well for several years, but with Pluck's focus in other business areas, the venerable RSS readers are set to be retired from our product line."

Current Pluck users have until 1/5/2007 to export their data into another RSS Reader.

It's interesting they put the following rose-colored spin on why they're exiting the consumer RSS Reader market:

"The good news is that RSS reading capabilities continue to develop across the web. You can get them by default in all of your favorite browsers, and RSS-based news reading capabilities are rapidly being baked into your favorite web sites..."

...ahem, not to mention Microsoft is integrating RSS into Outlook next year, Google will probably have Gmail integration soon, and Yahoo has MyYahoo and Yahoo Mail for feeds.

I'm afraid to say that consumer RSS Readers are rapidly becoming commodities and will soon be next to worthless - the real business is white label and enterprise solutions. So Newsgator for example is well positioned. And Bloglines and Rojo both got out while the going was still good, via acquisitions. Although it must be said that niche RSS Readers will still have their place - for example FeedDemon (owned by Newsgator) will continue to get an adequate number of subscriptions.

But as a standalone company, it's no longer possible. Consumer RSS Readers are a dead market now.

Other reactions

Trevor Jonas: "To say I now regret recommending Pluck to so many friends, colleagues and everyone within Bite would be an understatement."

Randy Morin: "Pluck was one of the first great RSS readers. It competed for awhile with NewsGator but the entire product-line became very buggy over time. The end of an era. RIP!"

I only found out today, so I'll be reading the Jupiter Research report on RSS Readers over the next couple of days. Expect a post from me about it by end of this week.

Rojo
Bloglines
NetNewsWire
Newsgator Online
ThePortNetwork
Firefox Live Bookmarks
MyYahoo
Google Desktop
FeedDemon
SharpReader

A few quick comments on that:

- 7 of my top 10 are web-based RSS Readers (I'm counting Google Desktop in that). And 7 of the top 8 are web-based! Possibly that reflects my own bias towards web-based apps, which presumably a lot of my readers share.

- On the other hand, NetNewsWire is still going strong in 3rd place, which probably reflects my geek cred ;-)

- Rojo and Bloglines dominate my stats, which suggests to me that the other web-based readers have a lot of ground to catch up (and there are tons of new web-based feed readers on the market currently).

Coincidentally yesterday, before I found out about the Rojo numbers in my Feedburner, I decided to give Rojo another try. I've been increasingly frustrated by Bloglines - it doesn't cut the mustard anymore in terms of organising one's feeds, tracking topic feeds and in general adding value to my feed-reading existence.

Already I've noticed that Rojo's performance has improved since I last checked (that was my number one complaint about Rojo) and its added some neat new functionality - e.g. you no longer need to physically click the "Mark as Read" button. So I'll be using Rojo for the short term and perhaps in time it will convince me to stick around :-)

My question to Bloglines: when are we going to see these new improvements you've promised in the past? You'd better hurry up, because it's clear that Rojo is eating your lunch.

According to figures released today, vendors shipped 4.8 million units globally in the third quarter of 2010, compared to 3.3 million units in the second quarter, with Apple's iPad representing 87.4% of tablets shipped.

The report finds the popularity of tablets was accompanied with increased adoption of e-readers as well, with a 40% growth over the second quarter; 2.7 million e-readers were shipped in the third quarter, with the U.S. comprising almost 75% of the world e-reader market. And although its dominance isn't nearly as striking as Apple's over the world of tablets, Amazon's Kindle rules e-readers with a nearly 42% share of the market.

IDC predicts the popularity of these devices will continue to accelerate, not surprising, as the fourth quarter figures will include what's already reported to have been a blockbuster holiday season for Apple and Amazon. IDC says the tablet market is expected to finish 2010 with nearly 17 million units sold and predicts that almost 45 million will ship in 2011 and almost 71 million in 2012. Growth in the coming year will be fueled by new Android-based tablets, according to IDC, which sees an increasing demand in both consumer and commercial settings.

IDC also predicts strong year-end figures for e-readers and continued growth in the coming year. IDC forecasts 14.7 million e-readers to ship in 2011 and 16.6 million in 2012, a growth curve that seems nowhere near as steep as that for tablets.

As we reported in October, NewsGator joined the APML Workgroup. APML, the Attention Profiling Markup Language, is an attention data spec that "allows users to share their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows the exchange of reading lists between News Readers." Attention data is not the most easy concept to grasp, but to quote Marshall Kirkpatrick from an earlier article on ReadWriteWeb, the simple explanation is that, "Attention Data consists of all the information online about what you read, write, share and consume." (For more on why you'd want to collect that data, see Alex Iskold's overviews of attention data.)

NewsGator is clearly serious about collecting attention data and using it to enhance the news reading experience. Reinacker said today that rather than just integrate APML into their feed readers, NewsGator plans to "implement an endpoint in our online platform where you (and only you!) can always access your personal APML data." The data will be aggregated from your usage across the entire NewsGator product universe.

The company hopes that by going free, they will attract more users to their reader (I am a recent convert, myself), which in turn will give them a greater pool from which to gather attention data and build stronger tools that rely on that data. But a poll we ran about a year ago revealed that 55% of ReadWriteWeb readers use web-based RSS readers (71% if you included personal start pages and portals). Just 18% still used dedicated offline RSS readers.

With today's news, we've decided to run that poll again. How much of an uphill climb does NewsGator have now to gain marketshare for their desktop readers? Will free desktop readers perhaps help win back some old users who have defected to online readers? Please share your thoughts in the comments below and participate in the poll.

Will the Kindle Follow?

As dedicated e-readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader and the Nook come under strong pressure from tablets like the iPad, chances are that we will see more price drops in the near future. At $259, the cheapest version of the Kindle now looks overpriced compared to the Nook, which also offers a wider range of features. As B&N's press release notes, at $199 the Nook 3G is now "the market's first under-$200 dedicated full-featured eBook reader that offers both free 3G wireless and Wi-Fi connectivity."

The Beginning of the End for E-Readers?

As Fast Company's Kit Eaton points out, B&N's price drop can also be seen as the beginning of the "e-reader's demise" and the start of a race to the bottom. As manufacturers struggle to bring the price of their devices down to the point where e-readers become attractive to a mainstream audience, they inevitably also have to cut some features. At the same time, tablets offer far more flexibility than dedicated e-readers.

According to a recent study by Informa Telecoms & Media, the market for dedicated e-readers will likely peak within the next two years, as consumers flock to tablet computers instead. According to Informa, the only way for e-readers to survive is to strip the devices of their wireless connectivity and make them as cheap as possible, i.e. under $99.

Here at tech-focused site ReadWriteWeb, the last couple of weeks of Google Analytics data shows that about 7.25% of our readers are visiting using Chrome.

Compare this to the month of August, when our browser stats looked like this:

Clearly Chrome has taken share from both Firefox (3.93%) and IE (4.7%), for our tech-savvy readers. However Safari's share has gone up a little on our site in September. Time will tell whether these trends continue, but for now Chrome is continuing at a solid 7% + for our site. Not bad when you consider that our readers are also statistically more likely than the general population to use Macs - which Chrome isn't available on yet. 18.28% of our August readers were Mac users, with 75.68% Windows.

More importantly, Chrome looks to be close to establishing itself as the 4th most popular browser in the mainstream market - which is bad news for Opera.

I regularly check the MyBlogLog widget on a new blog I discover to see if I recognize the faces of other recent readers, as a way to get a feel for the site's community. BlogJuice takes that practice and amplifies its usefulness by orders of magnitude.

I'm sure this is only the beginning of what can be done with MyBlogLog and I'm very excited to see what comes next. As I said when the MyBlogLog API launched, for all the good discussion around Data Portability, MyBlogLog is making things happen quickly. It's being done through proprietary technology, under the umbrella of one particular vendor, but damn is it hot.

It's not often that a tool comes along that I can imagine myself using every day. If BlogJuice holds up over time and traffic, this handy little service will join that list for me.

Many readers swear by e-paper displays that look and "feel" more like regular paper than traditional computer displays. These e-paper displays don't need backlighting and consume far less power than tablets that use back-lighted displays. A number of e-paper manufacturers are working hard on developing color displays with faster refresh rates that will allow Kindle-like devices to compete with the feature set of tablets.

The question, of course, is if users will really flock to low-end e-readers or if they will opt for more expensive multi-purpose devices like the iPad instead. In the near future, some of these tablets will likely feature more advanced e-paper displays that will combine the best of both worlds, though they will probably cost about the same as an iPad.

The Disadvantages of Dedicated E-Readers

For now, however, these advanced displays aren't ready for the consumer market, while tablets are getting more market share and iPad apps like Wired's new magazine app get a chance to show the advantages of tablet computers. A number of universities have experimented with the Kindle as a textbook reader, and it's quickly becoming clear that today's e-readers aren't ready for this market, as students ask for a more flexible devices that are more akin to tablet computers than a dedicated e-readers.

Sony Expands

This study comes on the same day that Sony announced its plans to expand the availability of its e-reader to Japan, China, Australia and a number of European countries. Asia is one of the fastest growing markets for e-readers, so this move definitely makes sense. With its low-end e-readers, Sony will be in a good position if Informa's predictions turn out to be true.

Just post your questions in comments on any Question of the Day post or email them to tips@readwriteweb.com with the word "Question" in the subject line. Our elves will start processing them immediately.

Those were all answers to questions you didn't ask, though, we just thought of them ourselves! We want to know what questions you, dear readers, would like answered. We expect they'll often be more sophisticated than the ones answered above, but they don't have to be.

Several of us on staff have experience as consultants; consider this an opportunity for free consulting plus input from other industry experts and our community of readers.

What Kinds of Questions?

How many developers does it take to screw in a wiki? We're not sure about that, but if you've got questions about using wikis at work, uploading videos from vacation, social search for spiritual salvation or anything like that - the new ReadWriteWeb Question of the Day is going to be for you.

Technical questions, strategic questions, marketing questions - we're open to all of them. Whatever we think our readers will find interesting we'll answer publicly and point you towards good places to learn more. Look for OPML files of the best blogs on the topic you ask about and custom search engines you can search for more. Because that's how we roll.

We're looking forward to hearing from you. We'll start posting answers to the most interesting questions we receive on Monday.

Docstoc has been in private beta and approaching official launch, but they were kind enough to give 1000 Read/WriteWeb readers a chance to preview the service early. Just navigate to http://docstoc.com/User/register.aspx and enter "RWW" (without the quotes) as the invite code to claim your invite. These are released on a first come, first serve basis.

A video introducing Docstoc to Read/WriteWeb readers (you!) is embedded below.

Remember, go to http://docstoc.com/User/register.aspx and enter "RWW" (without the quotes) as the invite code to check out Docstoc. Let us know what you think of it.

There's no doubt that Google Reader has improved a lot since its initial release - and is now at the forefront of innovation in browser-based Readers. Likewise I am fond of a few of the desktop readers, for example the Windows-based FeedDemon impressed me in my tests last year and the Mac-based NetNewsWire always gets rave reviews. Also a lot of people now use the start pages, like Netvibes and Pageflakes, as RSS Readers. Not to mention email subscribers and browser integration (Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE7, Flock, etc).

In any case, here's a quick poll which asks what type of RSS Reader you use currently - and feel free to back it up with comments.

Here is the comparison:

* in January we had the following category, which scored 2%: Portal-based (e.g. MyYahoo, ThePortNetwork). In the current poll, we're categorizing this type of product as 'Start Pages'.

Results

While this isn't overly scientific, each poll had over 1,000 separate voters and we are polling a tech-savvy audience. So I believe the results show definite trends that are worth analyzing.

Firstly, the above stats show that people are migrating from desktop to browser-based RSS Readers. The percentage change in one is virtually a mirror of the other, while none of the other categories has changed much (if any). Web-based Readers are up 7% and desktop Readers are down 6%. In the space of 6 months. I attribute this mostly to the strong growth of Google Reader, which in most peoples' Feedburner stats is in the top 3 Readers. Google Reader has been the most innovative major RSS Reader over the past year, and a lot of people I know use it as their main Reader now (as do I). Bloglines and Rojo also continue to be popular.

And consider this: the top desktop RSS Reader in R/WW's Feedburner stats is NetNewsWire. It's ranked 12th overall, well behind Google Reader, Bloglines, Rojo and other browser-based Readers.

The other trend of note is that start pages have now overtaken desktop Readers. According to our current poll, 16% of respondants use a start page (iGoogle, MyYahoo, Pageflakes, Netvibes, et al) as their main way to read feeds. 13% say they use a desktop Reader. In January, desktop RSS Readers still held the edge. This change is significant, given that a few years ago start pages didn't exist (maybe apart from MyYahoo) and desktop RSS Readers were the bee's knees among geeks.

What do you make of these stats? Do you agree desktop RSS Readers are a dying breed?

Update: Greg Reinacker (Newsgator) and Nick Bradbury (FeedDemon, owned by Newsgator) have both posted responses. Greg says that "I think much of the the "drop" Richard is seeing in desktop client popularity is most likely due in large part to the way the new desktop clients retrieve data", while Nick says that I "neglected to consider behind-the-firewall Enterprise customers who can't use web-based RSS readers, and was based on a survey whose audience is far more likely to use a web-based reader to start with." Both fair criticisms, although I would say that I don't necessarily agree that R/WW's audience is pre-disposed to use web-based aggregators.