The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

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.

  1. Rmail
  2. GreatNews
  3. Google Feedfetcher
  4. Bloglines
  5. NewsGator Online
  6. Netvibes
  7. Rojo
  8. MyYahoo!
  9. Zhuaxia
  10. Firefox Live Bookmarks
  11. News Alloy
  12. Pluck IE
  13. Windows RSS Platform
  14. YeahReader
  15. Newshutch

feedburner

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.

Reader Comments Subscribe
FeedDemon and NetNewsWire synchronize with NewsGator Online, so they're rolled into your stats for NewsGator Online.
The NewsGator team should get the FeedBurner team to change the description under NewsGator Online to reflect this reality.

Randy
I agree: Time for an update review.  I'd also like to see a review of Linux readers.

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.”"
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