Firefox - Mission Accomplished
Tachyon
The Tech Beat
Innovations, trends, and dustups in the world of tech
October 11, 2006
Firefox: Mission Accomplished
Steve Hamm
When the folks from Mozilla prepared to launch their open-source Firefox 1.0
browser two years ago, their hope was to gain enough market share to compel
Web sites to adopt open standards--rather than standardizing on Microsoft's
proprietary Internet Explorer browser technology. Job done. Firefox has
anywhere from a 10% to 18% worldwide market share among browser users,
depending who is counting, and almost every Web site that matters makes it
possible for Firefox users to fully access their pages. The turning point
came earlier this year when banks and financial services outfits including
American Express and Fidelity switched over. Now, with the impending arrival
of the Firefox 2.0 browser, you can expect Firefox to gain even more share
and make it even more difficult for Microsoft to call the shots,
technology-wise, on the Web.
Firefox 2.0 is expected to arrive in late October or early
November--whenever it's ready. But demand for the older version doesn't seem
to be slackening in advance of the release. Chris Beard, vp of marketing and
product management, reports that Mozilla is averaging about 350,000
downloads a day from its site, up from about 200,000 per day a year ago.
Mozilla figures it has about 70-80 million active users. Most of them are in
the early-adopter and Web 2.0 crowd, but there's also evidence that people
within large enterprises are using the product. The peak use day for Firefox
is Wednesday--indicating that people are using it at work.
One of the keys to Firefox's initial success was its community marketing
initiative. People signed up to help market and distribute the software via
their Web sites or blogs, and contributed to help pay for advertisements in
mainstream media outlets. The organization now has 180,000 registered
community marketing volunteers. One contest last year resulted in 300 video
commercials being produced--some of which have appeared on YouTube and other
popular video sharing sites. Beard's now trying to figure out how to get
some of the commercials aired on cable TV and other video outlets.
Firefox is one of the best proof points I have seen that viral marketing
works.
09:36 AM
open source software
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Herb
> http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/10/firefox_mission.html
Thanks for this interesting article!
--
Herbert Eppel
www.HETranslation.co.uk
Tachyon
news:vfudnS27aNS3T7LY...@mozilla.org...
Most welcome.
Tachyon
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sfbuck415
if Firefox were a lousy product (which it isn't) it would be just as
popular just because of marketing? This seems like proof that these
talking heads in journalism don't know what they're talking about. It's
nice to see Firefox mentioned in print though.