Newsletter #93 The Firefox That's Viral

Created on 20/12/04

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Our last newsletter (26th October, 2004) was "Publishing Online - Is There a Model?"

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year!

What is Firefox? It is an open source Internet browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The foundation, based in California, is a not-for-profit organisation that uses mainly volunteers to develop software.

One of the more fascinating marketing campaigns of recent times has been the Spread Firefox (sfx) campaign that resulted in 10 million downloads of the free browser in just over a month (now approaching 12 million). And it appears to be having an effect. OneStat reported in November that IE's (Microsoft's Internet Explorer's) market share had slipped to 88.9 percent in the third week of November, down 5 percentage points from its share in May.

So why has sfx been so successful?

• Firstly, Microsoft is regarded, by most within the tech community, as a monopolistic bully - a position supported by history. In the late 1990s Microsoft crushed the Netscape browser by offering Internet Explorer (IE) for free and bundling it with Windows. And it's as if the development calendar for IE stopped in 1999, as Charles Cooper of CNET points out "it allowed Microsoft to put Web browser development on cruise control."
  
• As a result of this "cruise control", Microsoft made it easier for virus writers to continually exploit vulnerabilities in IE's security. This has sparked a backlash with many of the prime movers in the sfx campaign having been personally hurt by IE security breaches.
  
• Firefox is a mighty fine browser that really does put IE in the shade. Features like tabbed browsing and automatic popup blocking make browsing more efficient. Also because it is based on open source code, Firefox is available to developers to customise as they want.
  
• It matters a lot more these days as all knowledge workers use an Internet browser for large parts of their working and non-working hours. More effective browsing can therefore markedly improve productivity so people care.

All this has created fertile conditions for a viral marketing campaign: A great free product, a common enemy and a large group of committed volunteers.

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These volunteers began by creating a community. On spreadfirefox.com http://www.spreadfirefox.com members of this loose-knit community interact via online forums, blogs and newsletters and the results are incorporated into future marketing efforts. Nearly every aspect of the site allows for member ratings and feedback. For example there are:

• Firefox picture galleries where members send pictures of how they've used the Firefox logo or name
• An affiliate link program
• Buttons and banners to be used on volunteer Websites
• Links to software review sites
• A continually updated number showing how many downloads since November 9th 2004.

As well, Mozilla volunteers organised a two page advertisement within the New York Times that ran on 16th December. The first page of the ad featured the Firefox logo superimposed over the names of the 10,000 donors who supported the project.

So where to from here for Firefox? Microsoft won't sit idly by as Firefox gains market share because controlling the browser is an important part of their strategy. IE is one of Microsoft's most frequently used applications and is even used to run other applications. Also its default settings send users to msn.com and use MSN Search, both owned by Microsoft.

We expect that within the next six months that Microsoft will suddenly find the resources to complete a major overhaul of IE, including many of the features Firefox and other browsers already have, and upgrading its security.

And that can't be a bad thing for the 80 - 90% of you who will continue using it!

Newbies

Power Users

Tabbed browsing is a great feature of Firefox (and other non-IE browsers). Assuming you're using Firefox here are some tab keyboard shortcuts:

• New blank tab "Ctrl + T"
• Close a tab "Ctrl + W"
• Next tab "Ctrl + Tab"
• Previous tab "Ctrl + Shift + Tab"
• Open link in a new tab "Ctrl + Enter"
• Select tab [1 to 9] "Ctrl + [1 to 9]"

For previous tips visit the Power Hot Tips page.

Landover Baptist Church (http://www.landoverbaptist.org/) "Where the Worthwhile Worship" and "Unsaved Unwelcome" is a clever parody of Christian fundamentalism. The site is obviously a long running one with quite a depth of information including links to other parody sites that seem to also be run by Landover Baptist. See Whitehouse.org as an example. Easily good enough to be taken as gospel. :-)

No new articles this month.

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

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