January 19, 2005
19 million firefox downloads
What an amazing accomplishment you all have made. In just a little over 10 weeks, you've helped to spread the word to over 19 million people. 19,000,000! When numbers get this big, I personally have a difficult time wrapping my brain around them so I turn to some volumes I can actually imagine. Nineteen million people would fill the NFL's largest football stadium -- 200 times over. Think of that, the largest professional sports venue in the US, stacked on top of itself 200 times! It's about the total population of Australia or New York! Not that it actually helps me visualize anything but my estimate is that these downloads add up to about 90 terabytes.
Posted by asa at January 19, 2005 07:48 PM
have you read malcom gladwell's "the tipping point"-- firefox is a PRIME example of the epidemics (in a non-disease, non-negative meaning) that define the growth of sudden trends or products. it's a great read, especially in the context of firefox.
keep up the great work! (and on the post-christmas boom-- yes, i was one of those college kids who went home and installed firefox on all of my parents' computers....)
Posted by: scott on January 19, 2005 08:11 PMScott... good relation to "the tipping point". In that same vein, SpreadFirefox turns all participant websites into connectors, in a way. Well, the popular, visited websites, anyway.
Posted by: John T. Haller on January 19, 2005 08:18 PMLooks like the rate at which FF is being downloaded is picking up again.
5M downloads: 11/20/04
15M downloads: 01/03/05
10 M downloads in 44 days or 4.4 days per million
15M -> 19 M = 4 millon in 16 days or only 4 days per million (~9% faster)
Maybe we should alert the Media that we'll be at 20M by Monday :-)
I agree with the people who think that the 'March to 10 Million Downloads' image on http://www.spreadfirefox.com should be changed to something else (100 sounds good; nice and round ;)
Nitpick: 19M is the approximate population of New York State. Just so no one gets confused ;)
If trends continue at ~1M downloads in 4 days, it will look like this:
20M late Jan
25M mid Feb (around Valentine's Day ;)
30M early March
(FF 1.1 is expected out sometime in March)
35M late March
40M mid April (around tax day; bleh)
45M early May
50M late May (before Memorial day)
Just to further nitpick, it isn't all that far from New York City's metro population (for 2000, http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t29/tab03a.pdf), which was 18.3 million, and I'm sure it isn't far from the numbers for 2004 :)
Either way though, its hard to believe that a population the size of New York (city or state) could be using firefox, unbelievable
Indeed.
Some more links:
As per http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761576416/New_York_(city).html#s3 The NYC region has "21.2 million" people (with "8.1 million" in the actual city as of 2002).
So either way; NYS or NYC metro region (but my point was not in the city itself :)
As per http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/ABS@.nsf/0/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a900154b63?OpenDocument Australia actually has just over 20 M.
Posted by: Limulus on January 20, 2005 08:30 AMOh, just one more note. I did some analysis of the dates when Asa posts about Firefox passing verious milestones (i.e. 15M, etc.) and so far in the month of January, its only taken 8 days for every 2M downloads (compared to 9 days in December, with a blip of 10 days over the period encompassing Christmas and New Years).
Thus, I predict that we'll actually hit 20M downloads sometime on Saturday.
Posted by: Limulus on January 20, 2005 08:37 AMThis is great news indeed, the front page of the site should without a doubt be displaying something else now. Firefox is about the future, not the past afterall. Forwards not backwards!!
The higher the numbers people see in that top right corner, the more people really believe this browser is taking on IE and succeeding globally, giving them faith and more reason to promote it even more.
I think it would be great to have some stats in text and charts, for downloads from 1.0 release to present, for different countries on the site. This would be great to really get a clear look at where Firefox has really come on allot, then to work out why - how to keep on doing whats making it work so well, then put into action the factors increasing popularity, pushing that success through. The potential here is unlimited.
For me in the UK and others all around the world, reading so much about stats in America make me feel a little detached from what is a global product, site, and community. Firefox is a global product, every person that downloads FF, supports it, comes to this site..deserve to see there regions stats, not just the country where the product is predominantly developed and used.
Do this and there's no reason why the front page cant display...the march to 50 million within the next month. Thats something WE ALL WANT and need to do TOGETHER!!
Posted by: diddykong on January 20, 2005 01:32 PMdiddykong, the 19 million figure isn't the US figure. That's world-wide. What makes you think that the 19 million was US only?
--Asa
Posted by: Asa Dotzler on January 20, 2005 06:17 PM