To RSS or Not to RSS?

I sent an email out to a few of my friends to poll them on their use of RSS feeds. It was an assignment for one of my classes this semester. My instructor guessed that although RSS subscriptions are very useful and can seem very popular since so many websites have them now, the number of users is quite lower than one would expect. She asked us to poll our friends and see what we find. Here are my poll results:

Are you familiar with RSS feeds? ...
(1) Yes, and I use them.
(2) Yes, but I'd never used them.
(3) No, not a clue.

The Outcome.

(1) IIIII 5
(2) IIIII IIIII 10
(3) IIIII IIII 9

Total: 24 responses.

Note that those who chose 2 or 3 (a total of 19 out of the 24) do not use RSS feeds. Thus, a majority of my friends do not subscribe to RSS feeds, though at least half them are familiar with RSS (in some way).

If you are curious what is the deal with RSS, I have included a video to help out with your quandary. (I wanted to embed it but there is no embedding code at YouTube--which I find odd--, so you'll just have to follow the link. I think it is well worth it.)
RSS in Plain English


For those of you who participated - Thank You!!!!