RSS feeds are the butter of the web 2.0 bread. The rss feed market is by nature a subset of the web but it’s getting bigger each day by the development of new ways to distribute content and media directly to the consumers.

I think it’s safe to say that half of the blogs and podcasts in existence today are consumed entirely via a RSS agreggator. And it’s now common for institutional websites to have some kind of blog too.

The initial wave of RSS clients was based on desktop apps. It took a couple of years for the next logical step, which was web based RSS aggregators.
For the latter part of the last decade our lifestyles have been changing to adapt to the mobile world. And web based rss aggregators fit perfectly in this new reality.
Bloglines was a major player in this revolutionary market until Google deployed it’s all mighty Google Reader and set web based rss reading as the new standard.

Apparently everybody forgot all about desktop based rss readers. At least until now when out of the blue Newsgator reminds us that desktop RSS readers are still alive, by releasing most of their product line for free.

This seems a desperate attempt at desperate times. And i really doubt that this move will dictate the return of desktop readers.

By the way do you still use a desktop based RSS reader? Why?