News and IT make RSS tick

More and more traditional media are starting to add RSS feeds to their web pages. In the Nordic countries this is still at an early stage and the number of users who subscribe via RSS is still very low. Most feeds have less than 100 subscribers via Bloglines and the publication with most subscribers in Bloglines is the Norwegian IT publication IT-avisen with 138 (as of 9 Dec 2004).

I have checked a sample of 50 important RSS feeds of traditional media in the Nordic countries in the Bloglines system and it is clear that IT and news are what interests most subscribers, 84 per cent of all subscriptions are for IT and general news. Business, sports, culture and entertainment have far less subscribers. This is of course an effect of both supply and demand.

Top 25 RSS feeds (out of 50 Nordic media feeds):

Among these 50 feeds, 92 per cent of all subscriptions are for Norwegian or Swedish feeds (N: 51%, S: 41%). Only 7 per cent are for Danish feeds and 1 per cent for Finnish. This figure might not be completely statistically correct, but I have chosen 50 feeds out of my list of 172 Nordic RSS feeds that I noticed had most subscribers. There might be RSS feeds that I am unaware of, and the Bloglines system is just one of many news aggregators. But I am convinced that it gives us some idea of what feeds are available and what subscribers choose.

As a comparison, here are the number of Bloglines subscribers for the RSS feeds of a selection of prominent Swedish blogs:

Tesugen.com 136 + 51 + 1 (three feeds)

Mymarkup.net 105 + +56 + 15 (three feeds)

CorporateBloggingBlog 103 + 82 (two feeds)

Det perfekta tomrummet 89

Johan Norberg 82

Henrik Torstensson 74

Media Culpa 72 + 15 (two feeds)

Annica Tiger 67

PJ just nu 54

MÃ¥nhus beta 49

Chadie 42

JKL 34

UPDATE: Added feeds according to comments. Again.