We've had over 100,000 people sign up for Bugzilla accounts. We've had tens of thousands of unique bug reporters file a quarter of a million bug reports in Bugzilla!! We get millions of downloads of releases that each result in tens of thousands of TalkBack crash reports. Hundreds of thousands of beta testers download our pre-release milestones, and even as many as several thousand people have downloaded a single nightly build. Community QA and testing, this massive organization of dedicated volunteers, have made Mozilla and Firefox what they are today. There's just no doubt about the huge impact that our community has had on the quality of our products. You are all to be praised and you deserve more credit than I can possibly give on this little blog.
Today, Blake Ross and I are launching a new series of community actions. We've seen the advantage of a massive community of testers and now we're going to try to build a similarly powerful community of marketing volunteers who help us get the word out about Firefox with the same vigor and consistency that we've seen from the QA and testing community for more than 4 years.
If you've been looking for that opportunity to do something more for the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox browser, we hope you'll join us in this new and exciting effort.
The first action we've decided upon is to recruit as many people as possible to tell download.com what they think of the Firefox browser. We know from talking to folks at c|net that applications that are getting noticed with reviews and ratings are the applications that get featured and we think being featured at download.com will help Firefox adoption.
For this first push, our goal is to get 1,000 (yes, you heard that right, 1,000) new reviews and ratings at download.com the Firefox listing by next week :) This is going to take some real effort and it won't be sufficient for each of you to just add your review. You'll need to get your friends and your family to join you in telling download.com what they think of Firefox.
We're not suggesting any comment for these reviews and we're not telling you how to rate Firefox, but we're confident that Firefox users love the application and if all of you who are using Firefox and reading this blog will add a review and if you each get a handful of friends and family to do the same that the Firefox listing will be absolutely buzzing and our friends over at c|net will take notice and that will earn us feature status and the eyeballs that brings.
So grab your friends, your family, all those people praising Firefox in their blogs, in their offices, and in their classrooms, and head over to the download.com the Firefox listing to add some Firefox reviews.
update: We've added 200 reviews since this post went up! That's amazing! Keep telling people about Firefox and don't forget to tell them to spread the word and to share their experiences with download.com. Wow! 200 new reviews and the first full day isn't even over yet. That's just awesome! Make an effort to tell a couple more people today. Look through your sent mail folders and find all those people that you pushed to try Firefox. Follow-up with them and ask them to follow-up at download.com. Have lunch with a co-worker and suggest they post a review. Talk to your classmantes and try to get at least one more person to try firefox, letting them know that if they like it they should pass it on and they should let others know at download.com. You all rock!
Posted by asa at July 7, 2004 09:20 PMThe first thing that can be done to imrove the download.com Firefox page is to correct the download size, right now it's 6.19 MB while it should be 4.6~4.7 MB.
Posted by: berkut on July 7, 2004 09:55 PM999 to go. I did my part (well, for me).
mentioned something that's essential for someone doing so much work in browser text entry windows: Drag! and! drop! text!
[Netscape 4 had it, and NN4's being left behind on the css implementation was what finally got me to drop NN4... but drag n drop kept me in NN much much longer otherwise. I hated that IE didn't do drag n drop. When I jumped ship to Mozilla, it was so good to get D-n-D back. Firefox has better UI implementation than Mozilla (whatever version for MacOS9) did-- but a coupla eeentsy quirks remain. (like drawing a marquee the size of the text window as feedback during dragging, rather than marquee the size of text-selection block. Also, took a bit to get used to making sure to begin drag from different spot in selected area than where the selection was begun.)]
Oh, and did I tell you that I've done some software documentation for a web app product, and the Mac screenshots are all in Firefox? (Windows are in IE6, sorry, I read the browser stats, and have to at least bow to that ugly majority beast). I like the number trends for the mozilla category, tho.
S
Posted by: Susan Kitchens on July 7, 2004 10:32 PMPlease don't forget Thunderbird people - add your ratings here:
http://www.download.com/Mozilla-Thunderbird/3000-2367-10299360.html?tag=lst-0-1
Posted by: Spark on July 8, 2004 01:13 AMHi,
I rated Firefox over at download.com but I found the description to be a bit laden in techno-jargon for the target audience.
e.g. Though the browser hides its advanced settings, you can still create modules using XML, CSS, JavaScript, and even C++.
I'm sure download.com's audience doesn't care if they can create modules in C++!
Yet, there's no mention of extensions or fast search, just Javascript Debuggers and DOM inspectors, can the description be revised?
Cheers
Gids
Posted by: Gids on July 8, 2004 01:23 AMMission accomplished ;) (132 by now)
I see a drop in stability ratings to 4, must be the EM/TM. We should have a 5-5-5 with 1.0
Apologies, seems like the review I referred to was by Download.com not Mozill Foundation, so its them spewing techno jargon...
Posted by: Gids on July 8, 2004 01:47 AMJust added mine :) . It's on 81% positive right now.
You know, I wish those people who have written a negative review could have instead spent the time down at Bugzilla reporting their problems and ensuring that they're fixed for the next version.
Posted by: Neil T. on July 8, 2004 01:56 AMIt may be a little harder because people have to register to add a comment.
some people just hate doing it.
maybe mention to everyone that it doesn't cost to register and that you can uncheck the boxes so that no email is sent to the address provided.
cheers
Chubb
Looks likes it's down to at least 995 or so left to go :)
Too bad it takes two business days for the comments to appear. Oh well, might be a good thing actually.
Posted by: Lloyd Cotten on July 8, 2004 03:57 AMAs I just commented over at Blake's blog, this seems like bad timing. Drumming up a bunch of votes for 0.9.1 when (apparently) a 0.9.2 security fix release is coming up.
Of course, having to do a security fix release sucks as well, but hopefully that can be a positive story that we've fixed the problem quickly, while MS fumbles around with workarounds for an underlying hole that's existed for a while...
Posted by: michaell on July 8, 2004 04:28 AMWell, I did mine, but at this early in the morning most of my friends and family are asleep. I know at least a few I can get to review it once they're awake, though :-)
Posted by: dolphinling on July 8, 2004 04:29 AMmichael think about the big picture...all this is just the prelude to 1.0
Posted by: arielb on July 8, 2004 05:13 AMOh! That like sucking registration @#$!
Posted by: darkdazzle on July 8, 2004 05:21 AMdone and done.
http://www.sizemoresr.com/mt/archives/cat_mozilla.html
Posted by: Steve Sizemore on July 8, 2004 07:45 AMWhat about tucows ?
What about Localized equivalent of download.com (in French, german Chineese ) ?
really good idea. a suggestion: make an 'official' site for all of the future actions... maybe make up a cool name for it... like the firefox user task force or something... whatever. i put my review in... just one thing: reviews aren't on the site for 2-4 days (tells you after you submit), and the site says its reviewed- by a person persumably. that might create a little back-up at download.com for the employees... lol.
Posted by: Joey on July 8, 2004 08:02 AMNow if we could only get people to stop using the MNG bug for as a bulletin board...
Posted by: Eric Hodel on July 8, 2004 08:31 AMFor some reason the reviews seem to be coming up rapidly (we're at 244 now), whilst the CNET User Opinions aren't being updated (still at 79)...
Posted by: David on July 8, 2004 09:26 AMThis is not a good idea. The point of download.com is for people to browse around, notice something, review it, not bring all of the product fanboys to make the product seem rosier than it is.
When people see how rosy Firefox is and then stumble upon crashes, imcompatible sites, bugs, mini-browsing oddities, they'll think the 1000 comments are idiots and will conclude those weren't download.com regulars but just a bunch of fanboys.
With 0.9.2 coming this is a waste of time, and to the developers, make a good release rather than constantly updating.
If you're going to do this, you should at least wait until 1.0.
Posted by: Peter on July 8, 2004 09:26 AMPeter, we'll do it again at 1.0, only then, we'll get 10,000 reviews! :D
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on July 8, 2004 10:34 AMI've put my 2 cents but it didn't show up yet...
Posted by: minghong on July 8, 2004 12:35 PMI've done my homework.
I also posted a comment on a french download site (telecharger.com), promoting everything I love about Firefox!
But of course, I always have to forget _some_ important feature. On c|net I forgot tabbed browsing. And on telecharger.com I forgot to talk about standards compliance.
I really need to plan these things out better ;-).
Asa, perhaps you guys should call people to put comments on other national sites as well? I'm sure there are a lot of Firefox users out there that also speak other languages, and we'd have a potentially stronger interest from non-English countries as well.
It's a rather unfortunate state of things actually... I'm the only Mozilla evangelist I know of in these parts (but then, "these parts" only count like, thirty people), and non-English speakers simply don't _know_ about the existence of Firefox, and I'm not even sure Opera is that hot, either.
It'd be nice to see the Foundation market Firefox in these parts as well (through Mozilla Europe, I guess, although that Web site needs to be marketed too, since only too few people know about it (still non-English speakers I'm referring to)). Basically, get some foreign language marketing going! ;-)
We need to build the interest of non-English speakers for Firefox, so we'd have a potential surge in usage as we hit 1.0.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
Posted by: Markus Lindström on July 8, 2004 01:24 PMAsa,
Firefox is awesome and this new community/marketing effort is impressive.
All the firefox presentation material has now a very professional touch. And no doubt it looks very attractive to newcomers.
But please, don't forget the modest, factual and up to date information about the current public release.
What is new with 0.9.2? I just discovered this new release, few days after installing the 0.9.1 release. What has changed? I tried to follow obvious links from the mozilla home page, going across wonderful 0.9 pages full of excellent information about 0.9 ...but nothing to tell what changed between 0.9.1 and 0.9.2.
Did I miss something obvious?
Anyway, Firefox 0.9 or .9.1 or .9.2 just rocks! keep up the good work!
Phil
Posted by: Phil on July 8, 2004 02:44 PMPhil, 0.9.2 is AFAIK only a security release fixing the shell protocol breach. This fix prompted the release of new builds of Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla. I don't think any other changes were checked in.
Posted by: Markus Lindström on July 8, 2004 03:00 PMGreat initiative!!! Congratulations.
Posted by: x on July 8, 2004 06:23 PMSlightly off - topic - I've tried to promote various Free Software products by placing banner ads on my photography site, which has a fairly general readership.
Although I can find buttons, I can't find a good Firefox banner, so at the moment I use a button in a 468x60 frame. How about some Firefox banners?
Regards,
Pete.
Posted by: Pete Harlow on July 9, 2004 01:25 AMPete Harlow:
Check this page for Firefox logos:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/buttons.html
Posted by: James D on July 9, 2004 02:39 AMThe next target could be BetaNews/FileForum. It is quite a popular site.
Mozilla Firefox:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1032985422/1
Mozilla Thunderbird:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1057948436/1
Mozilla Suite:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/942889097/1
Pete, our visual identity team is working on banners. I'll let you all know as soon as they're available.
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on July 9, 2004 06:38 AM2 things. We should be making as widespread as possible a site that encourages, and enables users to switch from IE to FF. http://www.fcdnet.org/switch/ It promotes and educates, something that is desperately needed for all the newbies who give FF a whirl, something doesn't work, and they give up, never to look at any thing Mozilla agian.
2ndly, as mentioned in the 2nd comment, PROMOTE Thunderbird too! I don't think all those mass-mailer virues would work through TB (or any other client other than Outlook or OE). IMHO TB is a much more stable product than FF (and FF is GREAT!!) It only had 26 reviews at the time of this posting.
Posted by: inlovewithjen on July 9, 2004 12:13 PMHi Asa,
Maybe you should encourage people to do their download via download.com
With the download rates of firefox it should easily enter in the top3 when everybody downloads it from there. Which encourages even more users.
If you want serious marketing ... talk to isps! They have resources and good reason to recommend firefox over ie.
As part of a small business isp in london/uk, we are standardising on firefox & waiting for calander, thunderbird & n|vu. As each product matures they will have a place on our support pages and given our approval and support.
You have evangalists here already @ this isp, but then we are mainly a unix shop with macs/linux and windows deployed across our own desktops
Posted by: bob on July 10, 2004 12:29 AMI want to thank you for making this browser available to the population.
I own my own consulting firm and I have been installing it on everyone of my customers and not one of them has any trouble with it yet.
I'm sorry but http://www.switch2firefox.com/stories/ looks pretty sad :)
Fire-a-Fox it is a goood, ya,
Problems? Problems?? I dont got to show you no stinkin Problems!!!!
UUBOB