Firefox plans mass marketing drive

Cnet ^ | 11/26/2005 | Ingrid Marson

[Panerai]

Mozilla is gearing up to launch a large-scale marketing drive when Firefox 1.5 is released.

Christopher Beard, the vice-president of products at Mozilla, said on Monday that there is a "strong likelihood" that Firefox 1.5, the next major version of the open source browser, will be released on Nov. 29.

Beard said the corporation is planning a "big marketing push" that will coincide with the release of 1.5. This will include a community marketing campaign that will encourage Firefox fans to tell the world about their favorite browser by publishing home-made videos on a Mozilla Web site.

"You will have real people telling you about Firefox's features--what's cool and great," said Beard. "People can create the video and upload it to the Mozilla site. The video will then be reviewed and put on our Web site, with a link from their location."

The videos will be hosted on the SpreadFirefox community marketing site, which will display a world map with a dot marking each location where a video has been created.

Beard said he doesn't know how many people will get involved in this campaign, particularly as it is dependent on contributors having video equipment, such as a camcorder or a Web cam.

"It's hard to tell. With The New York Times' ad campaign we thought it would take weeks to raise the money, but in less than 48 hours we had already raised enough for an ad," said Beard. "With this [campaign] it's also uncertain--are we going to get hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of videos?"

As the videos are likely to be posted in many languages, Mozilla will use international volunteers to filter the videos. It has already recruited teams to cover 20 European languages, according to Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe.

[chet_in_ny]

CORRECTION: Apollo

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

No I just have the regular browser, which is far superior than the one that SBC/Yahoo uses.

[MarkeyD]

I am at 1.07 I guess they are the "pop-unders" as described previously.

[The Westerner]

I primarily use Firefox. However, it does have quirks such as the way it deals with cookies. I like my Cookie Pal in IE much better. I've never had one popup using Firefox. And most of the time it's faster than IE. Plus IE has added two more rows of useless icons which clutter the screen, whereas Firefox doesn't add anything.

[chet_in_ny]

Drudge is a good site to test popup blocker browsers on, the advertisers there have some nasty malware- good luck, one last suggestion- are you behind a firewall?

[MarkeyD]

Drudge is typically where I get the pop-unders. I am behind a firewall.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/experimental/popupsdie/

Give it a try.

[catbertz]

Firefox is a fine browser, considering it's still a relatively young program. It's been in development for less time than Opera and IE, so bugs are expected, though the fix time is usually very fast.

It will be a super browser by 2.0(currently at 1.5rc3)

ps. AvantBrowser is also fine for those times when you need the basic features of FF, but with IE tech, as it's a shell for IE. I still use it, along with Maxthon(another shell)

[chet_in_ny]

thanks for the link, although i am fine with the current 1.07 release for about a month now, I will bookmark accordingly though.

[VeniVidiVici]

Paying to advertise a free product. This makes about as much sense as a whore advertising her wares in church.

[billybudd]

You may have inadvertently stumbled onto a new business plan.

[coconutt2000]

Inspired by your post, I downloaded Lynx and have been browsing Free Republic using it.

Lynx is a text based, UNIX commandline style, WWW browser.

Sadly, it takes up considerably more than 128K of memory.

[Eagle9]

Google Gets Closer To Firefox
November 09, 2005
By Antone Gonsalves

The Mountain View, Calif., search-engine giant is providing its ad publishers with a set of buttons that Web site visitors can use to download Firefox with the Google Toolbar, which is a browser add-in that takes a user directly to Google services, Mozilla said this week. Site operators using the buttons will be paid $1 each time someone installs the browser and toolbar.

The buttons are part of a new feature Google has introduced in its AdSense program, which shares revenue with Web site operators that agree to carry advertising from Google. AdSense Referral is for site publishers looking to make money by using Google-provided buttons linking to products and services.

Google has had a close relationship with Mozilla for sometime. Firefox ships with Google search built into the browser. The latest deal expands that relationship by getting the browser on Google's huge ad network.

Firefox competes with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, which dominates the browser market. Microsoft and Google are fierce rivals. Microsoft, which considers the search engines a key competitor, is making a major push in the growing online advertising market where Google and Yahoo Inc. have earned billions of dollars.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I've been using Firefox for a while now - I like it. I like the minimalist nature of the browser. (I don't install extensions)

There's a beta of the upcoming v1.5 (current beta is called Release Candidate 3) you can download at the Mozilla site, the 1.5 version includes auto-notify of program upgrades and says it will update online.

Presumably that means users will no longer need to uninstall then re-install to upgrade. I received an auto-notify of the upgrade from rc2 to rc3 a week or two ago, but upgraded manually the old way. I might try the upgrade option next time.

Don't get popups. Ever. Not sure which layer of security is responsible for that though.

Currently posting this on 1.5rc3 - curious to see whether I'll have an opportunity to upgrade to the final version via online update next week. :)

[clyde asbury]

I have popups turned off (as I did in IE), but I still get them at the same rate I do on IE.

Strange. In a year of daily use at home, I've had literally three or four popups.

The Drudge Report is supposedly a good test, and I never get a popup there with Firefox.

[Salo]

http://www.pierceive.com/

This contains updated filtersets for the adblock plugin.

Clyde Asbury: it's Microsoft Certified Sales Employee or Must Call Someone Else.

[clyde asbury]

I like Must Call Someone Else/Experienced, and Marginal Computer Software Enthusiast.

The problem is People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.

[clyde asbury]

Interesting videos.

[ncpatriot]

I have dial up, and have trouble downloading patches, updates. I have to take computer to shop every yr to have them do it on DSL.

Does anyone know if I can get around the dial up issue. No service available here but dialup.

[Vinnie]

I can't remember the last time I had a pop-up. Been using Mozilla and Firefox for several yrs.

There are some sites that don't render correctly w/ Firefox but there's a fix for that.

There is an extension you can add that reads 'open with IE'. That fixs the problem. (I don't have the url for the download but I'm sure it will come along shortly)

You can add an icon for it to your toolbar.