---
title: "The Decline of Desktop RSS Readers"
date: 2007-01-25
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# The Decline of Desktop RSS Readers

The latest [Read/WriteWeb poll](https://web.archive.org/web/20111130054932/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rss_readers_january2007.php) has highlighted some interesting trends. We asked what type of RSS Reader do you use the most? Here are the results so far, from nearly 900 respondents:

1\. Web-based (e.g. Bloglines, Google Reader, Rojo) 55% (495 votes)

2\. Desktop (e.g. FeedDemon, NetNewsWire) 18% (160 votes)

3\. Start page (e.g. Netvibes, Pageflakes) 14% (125 votes)

4\. Browser (e.g. Firefox Live Bookmarks, IE, Flock) 7% (62 votes)

5\. Portal-based (e.g. MyYahoo, ThePortNetwork) 2% (21 votes)

6\. Other (please comment) 2% (18 votes)

7\. Email-based client (e.g. Thunderbird, Newsgator) 1% (11 votes)

8\. I subscribe to emails from individual blogs 0% (3 votes)

Even though desktop RSS Readers are second-most popular, **only 18%** of the poll respondents use desktop readers as their primary means of accessing RSS feeds – well behind the 55% who use browser-based readers like Bloglines and Google Reader. A quick check of my site’s Feedburner stats confirms that desktop readers are in the minority. In case you’re wondering, Bloglines and Netvibes are most used by R/WW readers – although note that Google Reader stats are not currently counted by Feedburner and also Rojo has been temporarily removed. So Feedburner is under-counting RSS subscribers currently.

Also note that **start pages** are not far behind desktop readers, with 14% of the vote. Even taking into account the controversial figures bandied around by start pages about their user numbers (the latest I’ve heard about Netvibes, for example, is 10 Million users – which seems an awful lot), start pages are undoubtedly becoming widely used, amongst the tech set especially, for reading feeds.

Browsers are becoming more popular too, with 7% – and this is bound to increase when IE7 hits full effect later this year.

Interested in your thoughts on these trends – please add to the discussion in the comments below. Also here is the poll, which we’ll leave open for a little longer…

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/decline_of_desktop_rss_readers.php))*