Saqib Ameen for daily.dev

Posted on Feb 10, 2020 • Updated on Feb 20, 2020

👨‍💻 How Developers Consume Technical Content? [Survey Results]

#devnews #survey #tech #devs

As a developer, staying in touch with the latest development news is a crucial part of our jobs. We constantly search and learn new things. We were interested in understanding the habits of consuming technical content.

This survey was conducted by Daily team. For those of you who don't know, Daily is a browser extension which curates technical content from over 200+ sources and put them in your new tab. You can personalize your feed, change the layout, and consume content passively using Daily. ⚡️

👨‍💻 The Dev News Survey

Below are a few quick facts about the survey:

📝 It consisted of 12 questions.
✉️ We reached out to developers via emails and social media.
⏱ It remained open for 3 weeks.
👨‍💻 Total 460 developers filled it.

We also offered free swag to randomly selected developers.

If you filled the survey, keep an eye on your inbox, we have started dispatching emails to the winners.

🎉 Win Free Daily Swag — Developer Survey

🙌 Fill out the survey below to help us understand the needs of developers regarding dev news consumption and get a chance to win free Daily swag items!

🥳 Wohoo!!!

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— Daily (@dailynowco) January 15, 2020

📈 The Survey Results

We believe the results of this survey might be helpful for those who manage technical blogs or create content. That's why we decided to write a detailed post about it.

1 — What is your area of expertise?

Results show a major portion of users are Web and Backend developers. The good part is, there's a good amount of developers leaning towards Data Science, Big Data, and Automation. 🤖

Knowing the background of developers who filled the survey facilitates the understanding of the results.

2 — What is the hardest part about staying up-to-date with dev news?

Staying up-to-date with dev news isn't easy. It takes a lot of time and could be frustrating. There's a lot you have to take care of. See the results below to know what developers find hard while searching for news. 🧐

3 — How do you manage to keep yourself updated?

I found the results of this question quite interesting. Developers consume more content through social media than actually visiting the individual sites. Also, most of the devs rely on the content shared by the developers they follow. 🔥

Take a look at the responses:

4 — How would you feel if you could no longer use Daily 2.0?

This question is more of feedback for us to know how much value we are providing to the users via Daily. We were glad to know that we are actually helping developers more productive. 😇

5 — Once you found an interesting blog post, what usually happens next?

🤔 What really happens next? Either we save it to read later or we start reading immediately. In case if we find it interesting, we also share it in our network. Most of the developers seem to agree with it.

6 — How do you share it?

Although only one-fourth of the survey responders answered it, the response to this question was quite interesting. Most numbers of developers share the content via Slack followed by WhatsApp. Twitter was ranked number three in the result. 🎯

I believe the trend may tend to vary with big numbers but it's interesting to see WhatsApp and Slack on the top in this survey result.

7 — Do you consider yourself as a "heavy" dev news consumer?

This one is a simple question in order to understand how much developers consume content. The majority tend to be heavy tech content consumers. 👨‍💻

8 — Roughly, how many hours do you spend on searching for dev news per week?

What do you think on average how much hours developers spend on reading technical content? I personally spend more time than we got in the results. I would love to know how much time do you spend on it!? Share your number in the comments below. 🙌

9 — With whom do you usually share your favorite content?

The response from this question actually justifies why developers share more content via Slack or WhatsApp. According to the results, 72% dev share content with co-workers. Most teams use Slack to collaborate, so it makes sense why Slack is at the top of the list.

It is followed by 52% sharing content with their friends. This probably means using a medium like WhatsApp/DMs instead of sharing with followers in public.

10 — How often do you go back for the content you share?

This question, followed by two other questions are related to the sharing habits of the developers. Take them as a fun fact.

Devs usually go back to the shared content at least a month. My guess is, probably to give it read again or share it with some other folks. 🌟

11 — Does it make sense for you to keep the content you shared in one place?

Does it? Surprisingly 85% devs would like to have their shared content in one place. Kind of keeping a record of what you shared. I believe, those who share on their social media profiles, have a record of shared things.

12 — How much do you care if people read the content you share? [Rate 1-5]

Devs do care about numbers. That is why they use analytics and other tools to keep a record of their impact! Although the response to this question is not a yes or no, the ratings are inclined a little towards yes.

🙌 Wrap Up!

While some of the responses were expected the others were quite surprising. They actually provide quite useful insight into the behavior of devs. If you are related to tech content in any way, they might be useful for you.

Apart from that let us know how do you consume content? What are the points that you agree or disagree with from the survey result? Share your thought in the comments below.

👉 Don't forget to checkout Daily. We curate the best technical content for you from the web and serve you in the best possible way. Helping over 40,000 devs save time every single day and become more productive.