Is Rojo A Company Or A Feature?
Erick Schonfeld wonders if Rojo is the No. 2 feed reader, based on the number of readers of B2Day's feed:
[from business2blog: B2Day : Are Feed Readers Just Another Feature?][...] even though Rojo never got the attention of more popular Web 2.0 darlings, I have a feeling that Six Apart got itself a gem. This is purely anecdotal, but of the 29,247 people who subscribe to this blog through a feed, 41 percent (or 12,136) read the feed through Rojo. That makes it the No. 2 feed reader among my subscribers after Bloglines, which comes in at No.1 with just 200 more subscribers. If that sort of distribution is true for other blogs as well, then Rojo might be more popular than most people have realized.
Do other bloggers want to weigh in on this theory?
In the case of /Message, Rojo is fourth, trailing Bloglines (321, 20%), Netvibes (245, 15%), and NewsGator Online (203, 13%) with only 105 subscribers for 7%.
And, oh, I agree that RSS readers (with others, like Mathew Ingram) -- as configured they way they are today -- are only a 'feature', not a sustainable business by itself. So, Rojo may add a critical missing piece to the Vox strategy for Six Apart -- about which more later -- but Rojo and the others need to find something bigger to plug themselves into.
You don't even like RSS readers! I think if email is a sustainable biz (is email a sustainable biz?) then RSS readers are too. I know I live in a feed reader as much as in email.
Posted by: Marshall | September 06, 2006 at 05:42 PM
Six Apart Acquires Rojo!
Posted by: Paul | September 10, 2006 at 11:46 AM
There's still room for a good aggregator....... I'm just not sure what that is..... Rojo is a product not a feature and I still think we'll see more online RSS aggregators rise here in 2007.
I'm not sure if anyone has any details as to the #2 aggregator...... The numbers I've seen are all over the place.
I'd say feedburner is in a good position to let us know.
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin Burton | September 11, 2006 at 01:09 AM