15 million die-hard RSS aficionados

Martin Belam:

And despite the die-hard afficianados, RSS is no longer a key content distribution channel.

Of course, with some amusement, I read this in my RSS reader of choice.

He’s right in that RSS never became a mainstream means of consumption (indeed, I’d argue that it never really was a key content distribution channel), but wrong in that, for those of us who live or die by the information we find, consume and process in various ways, it’s still a vital tool.

And one that’s not as small as you might think. From a recent post on The Digital Reader, marking the year’s anniversary of the demise of Google Reader:

In 3 weeks Feedly grew from 4 million users to 7 million, eventually growing to 15 million users and 24,000 paying customers in February 2014 and earning the crown of leading Google Reader replacement.

15 million (on one service alone) is a decent chunk of die-hard aficionados.