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Firefox New York Times Ad Hits the Presses
Dave writes "The long awaited New York Times ad for Firefox has finally hit the presses. Because of the vast number of donations the ad covered two pages of the newspaper. It's being timed to coincide with 11 million downloads."
Does anyone have a higher resolution image so I can actually read the names.
-- john
It'll be interesting to see exactly how much this (wonderfully designed) ad will affect the number of downloads over the next few days. Here's to hoping this makes a difference with all the Joe User's out there.
...we could start a fund raising project to run a full-page ad for Lynx?
This way to the egress...
One has to wonder, will 'Monkey' Ballmer and his gang of miscreants reply to this? Will we see a big 'IE. Get with the program.' on the next days? They cannot let this stand...
j.
I can't get to the spreadfirefox.com site (damn /.) but from the summary, it sounds like the ad went out today. I thought we (donaters) were supposed to get a little pre-warning before it went out so we could actually head out and buy the paper.
Argh.
Spinning newspaper injures reporter.
Unknown host pong.
I looked at the PNG linked to in the posting, and i have to say, I wasn't very impressed. It sounds like something written by a bunch of open source programmers.
They refer to the people who've downloaded it as "users". While, yes, they are users, I think the majority of the web browsing population doesn't use the term "user" when referring to themselves. Something like "... 10 million people from around the world..." would've sounded less geek-like.
Heck, a lot of people don't even separate the "web browser" as something that is distinct. They think of the web as the Internet, their monitor as their computer, their case as their hard drive, etc.
The ad did focus on the spyware, crashes, etc. which is good -- but, IMHO, they just didn't do it in the "average computer users" tongue.
I love the ad! I especially like the hidden image on the first page (stare at the page long enough with uncrossed eyes and "IE Sucks" will appear in 3D). Was this a clever easter egg or just an attempt at semi-subtle subliminal advertising?
Here is a link to the folks behind the ad. Including a PDF version, a poster you can buy...and a place to put in the correction if they mis-typed your name.
Let's worry about that after Internet Explorer sinks below 50% on the usage charts.
That an advertisement, usually despised here, on the NY Times, a paper which cannot be linked here without some childish comment regarding registration is now A Good Thing(TM) on /.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
What do you guys think they used as the font/size for all those names? That's like EULA sized print!
What effect will Firefox's growing poularity have on its future vis-a-vis security? Does it become a more inviting target for malicious coders? Do any of you out there know if Firefox is written well enough to withstand such attention? I've been using Firefox since V.08. and I have watched with growing concern as its popularity has increased. Wether justified or not, I felt a little safer with this browser when less people were using it.
Regards,
JP
The facts expressed here belong to all, the opinions to me. The distinction between fact and opinion is yours to decide.
I am thrilled that an open-source product has the popularity and support to achieve such an incredible goal. I don't remember any OSS product ever having so much exposure, Linux itself not withstanding.
I personally have converted at least five people at work and several other friends to Firefox, all of whom have nothing but praise for it. Any web sites that I maintain now say "Designed for use with Firefox" with a link.
Regarding the comments about "Who reads newspapers at this time of year" and so forth, you need to remember that the NYT is reprinted and read all over the world. This is not just a single newspaper in a single city. The NYT is also highly respected (not that it really deserves it), so a lot of people will read it.
The next step IMHO should be USA Today. That too is a globally printed newspaper and usually has a different reader base than NYT.
My only concern in that they might have set a precedence with including names of donors. Let's face it. How many of you who donated did so more (not only, but more) because of the "coolness" factor of having your name printed instead of the core purpose of supporting a great browser?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It's my understanding a free copy of this ad is being included with every copy of the New York Times.
High-res, too. One day offer only, though.
Most of the readers will be unaware that Firefox does not suffer from the security problems that IE does. They may simply answer the question: "Are you fed up with your web browser?" with: "Nope. works fine"
This should do wonders for the NYT. I know I'm going to go out and buy a copy.
Badass Resumes
Compare apples to apples not apples to pomegranates. Firefox has only been around for roughly 2 years. Go back to when IE came out and look at its performance at the same time period. I'm reasonably certain you would see a similar number of issues.
Considering Firefox has only been out for 2 years the number of issues it has resolved is staggering. Further, the vast majority of issues that users are having (80-90%) revolve around the users machines and not Firefox itself. People don't maintain their machines. They randomly install/uninstall apps and don't bother to do a good clean up.
Add in the amount of spyware infected machines and the issues that come from the infection and it's no wonder people are having problems. I've installed Firefox on 3 machines and I know of someone else who has it installed and not once has there been any issue. I even upgraded from the 0.7 version on two of the machines and installed the 1.0 version on a users machine which did have spyware but once I cleaned the machine I installed Firefox and the user has zero problems.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mozilla needs a better way to get updates to Administrators. I love the product and use it all the time at home and work. I also mention it every chance I get. But it needs a way to get patches installed, instead of reloading the whole product or figuring out what files need replaced with a folder compare. What say ye!
Regis Tration-Required
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
I disagree. It is true that there are a lot of web savvy users that read the NY Times, but, speaking from my experience of people I've migrated to Firefox, you'd be surprised about the number of them who had maybe *heard* of it, but hadn't given it enough thought to give it a try. Perhaps this will give them enough of a push in the right direction so that they will actually give it a try. It's hard to motivate someone to go out to a webpage and download a piece of software to replace an existing piece of software, especially when they still don't have a clear picture of how much better the replacement is. It's like convincing someone to change to a newer, better tasting cereal, when lots of them really are quite happy with the cereal they have... If only they'd try that new cereal, though, you know they'd be hooked.
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
The SFX team provided a page for misspelled names and typos.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
"Hi, I'm Al Gore, inventor of the internet. When I'm surfing the web, I like to use a little program I invented called Mozilla Firefox. It's got moxie!"
While this ad is ok, I have ask what do the second, third and fourth advertisement look like? When will they run? How long will they run?
In order to market this product, perhaps a long term campaign that stresses all the ways Firefox will make interent browsing easier would be good.
One ad can simply state: "No pop up ads. EVER" with the firefox logo and link to download it. Another ad could highlight the best, most useful extensions. I think the weather update/forecast extension would be perfect for this.
Also: Are there ANY ads appearing on the NYT website, or any other high traffice website? This would make it easy to download the program.
Actually, a lot of the security in Firefox was patched on after the fact.
For example, older releases of FF/Mozilla had a ActiveX-type system that could popup an "Install Me" box when you visited a web page. When spyware makers started to abuse this, Mozilla simply changed the policy so it was impossible.
But, the only reason they could get away with this is that the feature had so few legitimate users outside of 1 or 2 known websites. If Microsoft did something similar, they would break thousands of legitimate applicaitons (this is where the popularity/installedbase argument comes into play).
Don't get me wrong -- FF did the right thing reacting quickly to Spyware installers, but it was still an after-the-fact reaction to a poorly designed feature.
The old argument about Mozilla was not that it was "Secure by Design", but that it was "A Great Developer Platform". Developer Platform means extendibility means opportunity for hacks/spyware. There's always going to be interesting new applications of the extentions/XUL stuff that Mozilla will have to keep an eye on.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
For those who haven't seen it in print yet, the ad is on pages A34 & A35.
Actually, most people *are* fed-up with Internet Explorer. It might be allowing pop-ups once a minute, or not displaying certain websites correctly (most often https), or just behaving slowly.
I've worked on 758 help requests for college students living in dorms since September. I'd say about 20% of them had problems that were simply solved by installing a copy of Firefox, nothing more. Many of these students are sold on the idea of Firefox. They do their own advertising... I've watched the most non-technical students advocate Firefox to the kid across the hall.
Last night I got a call from a user who could pull up yahoo.com, but after entering a simple search, the page would load and give some web server error. She went to Help->About, and clicking "OK" wouldn't close the dialog box. This was with an updated version of IE. Got her to go to mozilla.org, and the green "Download Now" section wouldn't display. After linking directly to the mozilla suite, and getting that installed, she was able to properly view webpages.
Out of the 758 students I've dealt with this semester, and the equally high number I've dealt with in the past 3 years at this job, only twice have I seen a resident contact us saying that Firefox won't load a certain page.
All those webpages with ActiveX controls..... the everyday user doesn't care about them. And slashdot not loading properly, I think we all know why that is.... its reporting itself as HTML 3.2 and still gets 116 errors from http://validator.w3.org/
This strikes me as more of a vanity move than a real marketing move.
I paid for my name to be put in the ad. I admit it was purely for personal business reasons. I support and install Firefox all the time for me clients that are constantly bogged down in spyware. Having an NYT ad that will be framed on my wall with my name on it gives this unheard of browser more credibility in the minds of my clients. Gives me some free press as well even if I have to point it out to people.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Welp, googling for them brought me to http://travel.lanfear.com/ rather quickly.
Marc and Samantha Wandschneider, you suburban looking, plain Jane looking couple, prepare for the slashdotting of your life! Muahahahahaha
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
There's a certain irony in checking out the Firefox ad from a CVS...
It's "no one," not "noone." Who the hell is noone anyway?
I paid for my name to be put in the ad. ... Gives me some free press as well even if I have to point it out to people.
:)
Don't you mean, gives you some free press, but all you had to do was pay for it?
Throw away that tired old web browser! With Firefox you get SECURITY, STANDARDS Compliance, all in one easy payment of not $100, not $50, not $25, but, FREE. Yes it's free!
This is my sig.
A geek's true Christmas wish come true:
First name on the ad!
sorry :(
Why not create a webpage with black and white ads for firefox in various sizes in PDF format. Then start a grassroots campaign where people inclined to donate could use those PDF files to take out small ads in local newspapers across the country. Prices of course vary but small black and white ads can be quite affordable for small newspapers which reach only a few thousand readers. I think such a campaign could dramatically increase exposure. ...just an idea.
Surprised there is no surprise eh?