New York-based Catalyst Group Design, which launched its CoFactors blog earlier in the year, has released a Blog usability report that looks at how basic blog features and design are perceived by Internet users. Not surprisingly, most of these users had no clue whatsoever about RSS. Somewhat disturbingly, though, "few participants even recognized that they were on an actual blog – and once they did, had a very different reaction to the information presented." Moreover, "a minority of participants understood how to navigate within the blog itself – with most being confused by areas for recent posts, categories, trackbacks and even the comments and archives functions."

What's interesting is that even a relatively mainstream blog operated by a major media company -- like Business Week's Well Spent -- presented more than its fair share of challenges to users. While blogs may have already reached a critical mass, the results of this Catalyst report highlight that there are a number of user-experience issues that still need to be resolved by blog publishers everywhere before blogs truly become mainstream.

(Thanks, Nick)