Thanks to the wonders of Google Reader, I can use RSS feeds to follow a crapload of websites (okay, 149 - twenty-six fewer than in June). I can't imagine using the web without GReader in a permanent tab in my browser, and its utility is such that I almost won't bother reading a new website if it doesn't have an RSS feed that can hook into GReader.
This leads me to notice that RSS feeds seem to be far more common in the U.S. than elsewhere on the web. For instance, I try to follow nordic skiing news sites from Germany, Norway, Italy, and Sweden, but the sites never have RSS feeds, and thus I don't really bother with them too much. It's an odd aspect of web life that the lack of RSS feeds is a bigger impediment than the more obvious fact that the sites are written in German, Norwegian, Italian, and Swedish. A quick cut and paste to a translation website can usually give me an ugly but passable translation.