I’m genuinely shocked by the apparently small numbers of people in the UK using RSS. Every global study I’ve seen recently has shown Bloglines to be the most popular tool for RSS consumption. Helpfully, Bloglines tells you how many members are signed up to (almost) every feed. I’d say that makes the Bloglines community as representative a sample as you’ll get (without really trying). When you dig around the numbers, it’s quite startling.
The most popular single feed on Bloglines, after Bloglines’s own (for which data isn’t published), is Slashdot – with just short of 60,000 subscribers. The BBC’s main international news feed is #6, with over 35,000 subscribers. How many does the main UK news feed have? As I type this… just 844. The international sports feed has 3,237 subscribers, the UK feed only 149.
Either Brits don’t like Bloglines, although I can’t think of any reason why not, or any alternative mopping up the UK marketplace… or Brits don’t do RSS. Weird.