Firefox Nation

There is no greater example of the power of blogging and open source marketing than the rise of the Firefox Web browser. Firefox isn't just a browser. It's a religion. The Mozilla Foundation has seemingly done everything right in getting Firefox users to market the product for it. First, they developed a truly awesome product (if you're not using Firefox, stop reading here and go download it). Second, they reached out to its evangelists and asked them to put buttons on their blogs - as I did. Finally, they mobilized their fervent fans to fund an ad in the New York Times. Through it all the Firefox team consistently used blogging to reveal their human side. Now that the product has reached "The Tipping Point," the press has fallen in madly in love with them. Blake Ross - who's on the cover of Wired mag this month - and his merry band of volunteer revolutionaries are changing not only the technology industry, but taking customer evangelist marketing to new heights as well. Be sure to stay close to Blake by reading his brand new blog. Open Source Marketing 101 is in session and there will be lots more to learn.

Comments

[Roger Pollack]

What surprises me is how little progress Firefox has made. It’s a superb browser and the alternative is a turkey, and yet, the turkey still has 90% of the market. There has been plenty of favourable publicity for Firefox, and almost universally favourable reviews, and yet nine out of ten people have not yet changed. It’s not as if people had to give up IE to use Firefox. There is nothing to stop people having both on their desktop. And still they do not change! I think this tells us something about the difficulties of promoting open source and changing habits amongst the noobs.

[Neil T.]

I think anyone who expects the entire internet to adopt Firefox in just 3 months (the time since the 1.0 release) is being a little over-optimistic. It took Microsoft a couple of years to defeat Netscape; it may take Firefox just as long to do the same, or longer, considering how many more people are using the internet now.