Web Based RSS Aggregator Rankings - Technology Evangelist

The folks running the Hitwise blog continues to crank out interesting peeks into the data they collect. This time, LeeAnn Prescott takes a look at the market share of RSS feed aggregators, including Bloglines, Rojo, Newsgator, Netvibes and Google Reader:

For those of you unfamiliar with RSS aggregators, they're basically programs that allow you to create a custom news site. In some ways, it's similar to what you may be familiar with from a custom My.Yahoo page or a personalized Google Homepage, but it goes much further than that by bringing not only the headlines but the posts from blogs, news sites, photo galleries, comics, and classifieds into a single web page for fast and easy access to content you read regularly.

Personally, I'm a fan of Bloglines, which remains the top dog in this field. Here are some previous stories on Bloglines.

Google Reader is a relatively recent entry into this field and has been growing as the application improves (explained here).

I've barely tried Rojo, but whether you use Rojo for RSS aggregation or not, it's worth signing up with the service so you can get their weekly summary of the blogosphere where they look at everything from tech to politics to entertainment news.

Netvibes and Newsgator: Never tried them, but it doesn't really matter what I think. It's what works best for you that really matters.

Here are links to each of the five web based RSS aggregators listed above set up to allow you to add Technology Evangelist's RSS feed to your account. Let us know which service you think is easiest to use, have the most intuitive layout, and doesn't crash all that often.

Bloglines | Rojo | Google Reader | Newsgator | Netvibes

Comments

1. Posted by: Aaron Landry on January 23, 2007 6:14 PM:

There isn't much question that Bloglines is the most popular of the web-based RSS readers any way you look at it, but I have to argue that the data presented LeeAnn Prescott's post is borderline pointless. She does mention that it doesn't take into consideration some types of readers but it also doesn't take into consideration some of the differences between some of the web-based RSS readers including the frequency of the updates and how much traffic those updates generate. As well, many of the services will generate one hit that ends up being utilized by a variable number of users. I bet if we were able to do a test of the same date range and the same services but had a theoretical graph of 5 total RSS feeds available on the internet in total and all 15 theoretical users of the internet subscribed to all 5 RSS feeds, the lines wouldn't be equal.

It's almost like arguing that "MySpace is bigger than Google" based solely off of the amount of traffic it generates.

Either way, graphs are fun.

Required fields marked with: *
Name*:

Email Address*:

URL:
Remember personal info?

Comments*:

HTML Tags you can use in your posts:
<b>Bold</b> = Bold
<i>Italicized</i> = Italicized
<a href="http://www.othersite.com">Link to Other Site</a> = Link to Other Site

Please keep comments on-topic. Contact authors or other commenters
directly for off-topic conversations.

Notify me of future comments via e-mail

Technology Evangelist Digest - Free Newsletter

Sign up for the free Technology Evangelist Digest to receive daily updates, editorials, and practical advice on emerging technology trends in hardware, software, webware, marketing and beyond.

Technology Evangelist Digest will keep you up to date on the technology trends that will help make you more productive and efficient both in business and your personal life.

Let's face it: If you made it to this line, you must have found something valuable on this page, right? Think about how cool it would be to have something free and interesting to read every day from Technology Evangelist by signing up today.

1. Fill in your email below,
2. Then click on the confirmation email you receive.
3. That's it. Your first Technology Evangelist Digest will arrive within 24 hours.