Tag: press

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:

• Mozilla Feeds on Rival’s Woes – Wired News
• Replace and disable Internet Explorer now – NewsForge
• IE Users, Proceed with Caution-If at All – eWeek
• The worm that wasn’ t quite – InfoWorld
• NetSuite Rolls Out Apple Support – CRM Daily, CA
• Microsoft security flaws send Web surfers looking for … – WRIC TV, VA
• Now HP says ditch Netscape – Computerworld Australia, Australia
• Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Receive Minor Updates – The Mac Observer

And some other news sources to cover Mozilla:

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.