I came across several posts this week discussing the offline / mainstream press’ role in driving mainstream adoption of web2.0 techniques and services.
First, here is a report comparing offline magazine websites’ web 2.0 features: “Analyzing the presence of American Magazines on the Internet“. They found that 48% of the top 50 most circulated american magazines’ websites uses RSS, and 40% of them have at least one reporter blog.
Then, today I read this post at Read/Write Web on mainstream media’s implementation of social bookmarking and RSS. Their quick scan of some mainstream media websites (and not all of them tech-oriented!) shows that all sites now have RSS feeds, and Time magazine and the NY Times offer all web 2.0 features examined (digg links, etc).
Add to that the fact that IE7 now has RSS support, which could give the final push to RSS for mainsteam consumer adoption. And once a consumer figures out why RSS is cool, it is only a baby step to discovering social sites. Maybe 2007 will be the year of web 2.0 and social media going truely mainstream.