Now that Google is reporting GoogleReader subscriber counts, it's time for me to report my top User-Agents, as reported by FeedBurner. I last reported these numbers back in August.
- Rmail
- GreatNews
- Google Feedfetcher
- Bloglines
- NewsGator Online
- Netvibes
- Rojo
- MyYahoo!
- Zhuaxia
- Firefox Live Bookmarks
- News Alloy
- Pluck IE
- Windows RSS Platform
- YeahReader
- Newshutch
Where did SharpReader, Attensa, Flock, Onfolio, RssReader, FeedReader, NewsGator, NetNewswire and FeedDemon go? Have users graduated to a second generation of RSS readers? I think it's time for a new Review of RSS Readers entry.
Randy
Personally, I'm finding that Bloglines is getting tired. Google Reader is okay. The Thunderbird reader is also okay. FeedDemon, NewzCrawler and Awasu have serious flaws.
The best bet seems to be Omea Pro (if someone uses Outlook). For online, both Bloglines and Google Reader have a place, so I still use both. But, quite frankly, I'm doing more and more reading offline, so Omea becomes my news reader of choice.
Also, I agree with Jakob Nielsen: Drop "RSS." It's too geeky. Even people who use RSS readers often don't know that they are!! "News reader" makes more send than "RSS reader."
To quote from the current edition of his report on email usability, "The first, and strongest, guideline about news feeds is to stop calling them RSS. In our most recent study, 82% of users had no idea what this term referred to. In general, it’s typically wrong to use implementation-oriented terminology, because most users don’t understand the underlying technology and don’t care about it. It’s better to use terms that indicate what the concept does for users, and “news feeds” does this far better than “RSS.”"