OK, this is a theoretical question, because I don’t have a single iPod, and even with the new iPod Shuffle I don’t plan on getting one. But I wonder what happens if you have more than one iPod per computer? Does the new lower-priced Shuffle coexist peacefully with its more expensive brethren? Aren’t there some protections built in expressly so you can’t share more than one iPod with a single computer, or vice versa, to avoid people sharing their entire music libraries indiscriminately? Yes, I’m clueless on the details, and partially informed is probably worse than uninformed here. But someone let me know.
Day: January 11, 2005
-
Aggregator market share
Is it a problem for an industry when there are more caveats than statements about one of its key measurements? Yes, though I suppose it’s an opportunity, too. Dick Costolo on the FeedBurner blog put out their current information on RSS aggregator market share, leading with the many, many caveats that are necessary. It’s still sure to spark some feedback, including other speculations… which is a good thing. I’m mildly curious if Bloglines’ position at the top is enhanced by other client developers using the Bloglines services? I know Bloglines reports in its user-agent how many Bloglines subscribers there are (a practice all aggregators should emulate, where possible), but how are the requests made for Services partners considered? Probably not at all, but I’m curious all the same.
In response to the FeedBurner post, Tim Bray posted his numbers for ongoing. He sees growth over 2004, but wonders about the variability. Maybe I’m being too simplistic, but looking at the timing of the dips, I would say that many of his readers had their client aggregators shut down over Thanksgiving and the year-end holidays.
I haven’t been keeping systematic track of new aggregators, but even in my scanning, I notice new ones all the time. FeedBurner quantifies and confirms that feeling:
RSS Client market is not yet consolidating, it’s expanding. There were 409 different clients polling the top 800 FeedBurner feeds in September and now there are 719 different clients.
Just this morning Scoble noted the public release of Lektora, which integrates into Firefox or IE 6 on the PC earlier this morning. This beta is free, and they plan to charge a “competitive price” when they are done. Pardon my skepticism, but good luck raising the price from free. The numbers show you’ve got some competition, and of the top 20 listed by FeedBurner, only NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, and NewsGator (Outlook edition) require payment… and NetNewsWire has a Lite (free) edition, too. (I’m a paid customer of NNW, still using 1.07 and waiting for 2.0 to be final.)
The next slice I’d like to see is operating system. Ignoring the web-based aggregators, the Mac looks over-represented. Another sign of early-adopters, to be sure.