Categories
Mozilla

The next step is mainstream

cc: marketing-public

Mozilla has been getting a TON of press lately. From Slashdot, to CERT, eWeek, CNET you name it. Mozilla Firefox 0.9 has generated some serious buzz. The recent wave of IE flaws has also generated some buzz. CERT recommending alternative browsers has created some buzz. That’s great, but it’s not enough.

The following is just a list of the recent articles on Mozilla. Take a quick look at some of them, and who is writing them:

And some other news sources to cover Mozilla:

eWeek
InfoWorld, CA
ComputerWorld
InternetNews.com
eWeek
ZDNet.com
Forbes
InfoWorld, CA
The Register
InternetNews.com
The Inquirer, UK
International Herald Tribune, France
Wired News
Indianapolis Star, IN
USA Today – 17 hours ago
Straits Times, Singapore
EE Times Online
Detroit Free Press, MI
Salt Lake Tribune, UT
Times of India, India
News24, South Africa
Newsday, NY
The Age, Australia
Information Week
CBS MarketWatch
Slate
ZDNet.com
ComputerWorld
The Inquirer, UK
The Register, UK

Source for the above is Google News, using the query “Mozilla

Now, what did we see? My analysis is that the same target is being bombarded with Mozilla news. The tech crowd. The problem is this is a tiny percentage of the web community. And most of them are aware of Mozilla. Many have switched. Quite a few of these sites are big Linux news sites. They aren’t using IE to begin with!

The “next step” is to hit more mainstream media. Mozilla needs to hit the general users. We’ve got a good presence with the tech community. But to move forward, the target needs to be end users. Grandma, Dad, the guy down the street. We’ve got the tech community, but the IE users are in large part the general community.

The discussion right now, as Firefox 1.0 approaches is how to get that target audience. A few idea’s I’ve heard are:

  • grass roots campaign (blogs, etc)
  • some sort of affiliate program (perhaps win a prize if you bring in the most referrers to download Firefox)
  • partner with OEM’s and get Firefox pre-installed on computers (companies like IBM, HP/Compaq, etc.)
  • get corporate users. Get companies using it, so employees can take it for a spin, and get it at home if they like it

So my question to the general community is how do we address this issue?

Update: We should also have a mailing list that can only be posted by a mozilla staffer. Used for releases to keep people informed. As soon as a new release comes out, an email is sent to those interested.

5 replies on “The next step is mainstream”

I think we have a good start. Most mainstream news would rather not make any recommandation themselves. They would rather quote the experts. What we should do is start quoting experts and get these quotes to reporters.

> We should also have a mailing list that can only be posted by a mozilla staffer.
We have at least three such lists
http://www.mozilla.org/communi.....a-announce
http://www.mozilla.org/communi.....i-announce
http://www.mozilla.org/community/news.html

Many of our computer magazines have reviewed FireFox and Thunderbird and gave them good grades. In some cases there is 2-3 page articleas about the project, advantages etc.

Make the good product and people (who care) will hear about it, eventualy…

Leave a Reply to Chris G. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *