And even RSS newsfeeds, which the Times adopted early, are still "a
niche," Nisenholtz says. (In June, RSS feeds generated 12.2 million
pageviews for the site out of a U.S. total of nearly 295 million.) "RSS
is still very techie," he says. "Most people outside the business are
totally unaware of it."

For Nisenholtz, making all this stuff
appealing and accessible is a real challenge. "We touch 25 or 26
million people a month," he says, "and a very minimal number of them
are technologically savvy.... Our median age online is 44 or 45 years
old. So we have to find ways to bring people into the loop who don't
know what a tag cloud is."

The more crowded the Web2.0 bubble gets, the more important it's going to be to remember what users are actually willing to use. For MyBlogLog, helping you find bloggers and readers that you'll love must remain as easy as clicking on a face. All sorts of great web services for developers will support and emerge from that goal, but click'n'surf, click'n'surf is all we can ask of our users.

[via fred]