One of the more interesting dynamics on Web that I've been following is the difference between users and usage on weekdays and weekends. We only understand part of this because we don't know user counts for other browsers, but I think we could have some interesting discussions and maybe even make some guesses at other browsers based on what we do know about Firefox.
Here's what we know:
From our own update ping metrics, we know that the total number of active Firefox browsers drops about 19% on weekends.
From Net Applications we see that Firefox usage goes up by about 10% on weekends. (Other usage tracking sites confirm the trend, though they differ in degree.)
So what's going on here? The number of active Firefox installs drops pretty seriously on weekends, but Firefox usage goes way up.
There's only one simple explanation, and that is that the total number of active users on the Web drops precipitously on weekends, but that decline isn't as steep for Firefox as it is for IE.
There are two reasons for this, I believe. First, I think that there are a lot of people who only (or mostly) access the Web from work and those work machines are locked down in terms of browser choice, heavily favoring IE. When those people go home on the weekend, the total number of people active on the Web drops dramatically and negatively impacts IE's active user number and IE's usage share.
The second reason, I think, is that people who access the Web from both work and home, while they may be stuck with IE at work, have made the choice to move to Firefox at home. So when those people go home, IE again loses users and share, but Firefox picks up some users and share.
I think it's probably more the former than the latter, but I wouldn't discount those home choice-makers completely. Are there other explanations for this dynamic?
Now, I'm just not good at math, but I'll bet some of you all are. Maybe one of you could help me take this a bit further.
As I said above, on weekends Firefox users drop by 19% while usage grows by 10%. We also know that IE usage drops 7% on weekends. If we just look at Firefox and IE for a moment, is it possible to work backwards and figure out how much IE's active users drops off on weekends?
Posted by: Damian | May 4, 2009 12:16 AM
Luis: there is Mozilla's bugzilla to make such suggestions.
Posted by: Stifu | May 4, 2009 7:38 AM
I'd agree with the thrust of your theory.
A lot of people work in front of a computer during the day, which means it's more than likely that they'll be using the internet.
At weekends, people are more likely to be out, enjoying their leisure time, which in turn means less people as a whole using the web.
Given most people will be forced to use IE at work, then IE will naturally enjoy a higher share during the week.
And given no-one is forced to use IE at home, then Firefox will naturally enjoy a spike in it's share during the weekend.
But I'm not sure there's enough data here to answer your question.
Posted by: Mr Lizard | May 4, 2009 8:02 AM
Stifu, Luis makes a valid point. There is a long-standing bug report on this already. There may be some progress on this, but it hasn't been treated with much urgency, in my opinion.
Asa makes a very good attempt to estimate numbers of users, but the ping metrics may be skewed. As far as I know, Firefox does not ordinarily ping when it is run from a Windows nonadministrative account. The one exception I know of is if it's installed so the user has Write access to the Firefox program files.
Posted by: VanillaMozilla | May 4, 2009 8:11 AM
It's a shame Luis' point has been removed, as it was wholly relevant to the discussion, in that the ping metrics are largely unreliable due to the bug that is already filed at bugzilla.
I think in Asa's haste to remove off-topic comments, he removed Luis' post thinking it was 'just another pet bug rant', when actually Asa could have been constructive and offered Luis the opportunity to explain himself a little better.
:-)
Posted by: Colin F | May 4, 2009 1:11 PM
Yes, Asa is usually a pretty good sport about that sort of thing, and tolerates a lot of dissent in his blog. I've been hammering on that subject and similar subjects for a while now, and have usually received only serious replies.
Posted by: VanillaMozilla | May 4, 2009 7:44 PM
"If we just look at Firefox and IE for a moment, is it possible to work backwards and figure out how much IE's active users drops off on weekends?"
In short: No.
For Firefox you can probably reduce the difference between users and usage over a certain time span to a single co-efficient and this co-efficient is likely to be fairly constant for week days and fairly constant for weekend days. However it's then a big unfounded leap to assume the same constant applies to IE, there are too many different global trends, market attitudes and different common user cases to even assume the constant is even close.
There's one third reason that seems pretty obvious to me and strikes at the heart of the difference between usage and users. Average timespan a Firefox users browses the web vs. an IE user and how that differs between work and home.