Opera to Put User's Face in Times Square

An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."

Comments

Screen Resolution

[biocute]

For me, I would rather have my photo on opera.com for a month.

By the way, does anyone know the screen resolution of this thing? I checked here but it didn't say much, and Wiki says it's often very low resolution.

Re:Screen Resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically, large video displays have lower resolution than you might think. For example: The physical pixel size of the Samsung display in Times Square is ~500px X ~600px

You'd actually be pretty amazed how good something can look at such a low res.

Whoever wins...

[ari_j]

I hope she's hot.

Re:Whoever wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

Naah, it'll be * * Beatle-Beatle...

Re:Whoever wins...

[Anonymous Coward]

She will be. Also, smiling, successful-looking, pretty but not super-modelish, young, and caucasian.

We still encourage other users to submit their photos. This will allow us to focus on improving our product, because it lowers costs on our next ad campaign.

I.M.Moral
PR Department
Opera

That chick from accounting...

[infinite9]

So I guess it will be someone's O-face? Oh! Oh!

The real question

[AKAImBatman]

Will this be like the previous "Swim the Atlantic" bit? "Oh no! Someone pulled the power cord on the screen, so we can't do it! But we REALLY tried! See? And don't forget to download Opera!"

Meh.

dear god

[eyrieowl]

i look around the office, and i hope, and pray, that no one here uses Opera....

Re:dear god

[BushCheney08]

Why? You don't like to see her scaled down?

I already submitted

[ImaLamer]

this profile of myself but they rejected it for some reason.

Something about competition and being human or something...

Re:I already submitted

[daniel_newton]

the legend of goatse has made me too afraid to visit links such as these.. I guess Ill never get the joke

Here's the resolution...

[gasmonso]

There are a total of 2,300,000 LEDS at 122x48 feet. That equates roughly to a resolution of 2418x951 give or take a few :)

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:Here's the resolution...

[infinite9]

That equates roughly to a resolution of 2418x951 give or take a few

Since it's in times square, does that make it a new year's resolution?

Goatse anyone?

[delphipro]

Any chance of getting goatse up there? Think about the public service that would be, hundreds of thousands of people sobering up instantly. Of course, it will also point out which of your friends are truly grotesque as they are the only ones smiling while everyone else is gagging.

Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[worb]

I'm hesitant to reply to this troll and give it more exposure than it needs, but on the other hand, a few corrections/different points of view probably won't hurt...

"the big banner should just say, "we used to cost money, but now we're free even though many web sites don't display properly,"

That is true for all non-IE browsers. Until v1.5 Firefox couldn't even display the old Slashdot correctly, but you often had to refresh to make it work properly.

"but do note that we invented lots of cool ideas that were adopted by all of our competitors and most people don't know this but most of our core marketing team is in the southern USA area"

Opera Software is based on Norway (Northern Europe).

"and also we have this mobile browser accelerator that nobody even really uses much because it only works on like ten phones"..."

Not sure what this is all about, but Opera Mini works on most phones available today.

"and the winner of this contest will be: ideally thin, caucasian and with a hip "opera user look" that the company can deploy in a larger integrated campaign. mark my words: no fat people, burn victims or others in that category of "couldn't work for abercrombie" will win..."

Let's see what happens. Opera isn't exactly known to do it the traditional way. Heck, the CEO doesn't even allow himself a big fat pay check even though he certainly deserves it. He could have been a millionaire, but drives around in a rusty old car.

"in fact, my guess is that the winner will be employed by either starbucks or abercrombie, age 22-26, female (tech influencers right now), shoulder length hair that's dark, thin and with a natural look light on cosmetics and wearing only solid colors on the billboard because it will create better contrast with the opera logo..."

Actually, the person will be chosen based on submissions posted on the my.opera.com community site. They will not choose a professional model, since this isn't Opera's style. See above about how even the CEO is really down to earth.

They don't like to brag, so this marketing campaign is really unlike Opera to begin with, so my guess is that they'll choose someone who looks decent enough, but probably not someone who could have been a model anyway. Just an average person who doesn't make Opera look really bad.

Basically, this is meant as a "thanks" to the community that's been supporting Opera through all these years. Opera just turned 10, remember.

Oh well, this probably won't get through since bashing Opera seems to be the popular thing to do these days...

Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[StateOfTheUnion]

I couldn't agree more . . . And to make matters worse, I just went to the forum where you can see uploaded pictures for the contest. If the 7 (yes that's right . . . seven) people that uploaded pictures as of the time that I visited the forum are any representation of Opera users, then I think that this ad campaign isn't going to get the demographically perfect person . . . Or at least not the demographically perfect person from a marketing perspective (stereotypically youthful, saavy, successful, and of course good looking with a look that implies professional or student in a way that would inspire people to use opera). And I have to agree with the parent post that the winner will probably be female . . . except there were no female pictures when I checked.

Of course opening your eyes, smiling, and focusing the camera would have helped . . .

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3

Re:Here's my entry

[Aranth Brainfire]

You can't simultaneously say it is harder to install than firefox AND say that it doesn't have any features Firefox doesn't have. To get 75% of Opera's features in Firefox, you have to install an extension. And unless you already know exactly what extensions you already want, this process takes time (and is annoying as heck, in my opinion).

If you actually want to know what features Opera brings, visit http://opera.com/features/ and look around a bit. Nobody really cares enough (I hope) to waste their time recompiling a list for you.

For me, it really just boils down to the philosophies behind them. Use Firefox if you really care that much about everything being open source or fiddling with your browser. Use Opera if you really don't care and just want something that works with advanced features.

oh boy

[icleprechauns]

i hope i dont win...somehow 50 ft pimples consuming times square seems more like something out of the next godzilla movie than something someone would actually want to see

if she's got to be cute...

[anticypher]

Then let it be this girl:

Melissa Theuriau
with other photos here and a GIS will turn up enough to keep you happy.

Currently a Fark cliche, but one of the most pleasant to look at.

the AC

Re:if she's got to be cute...

[Aadomm]

No wonder the French keep so well abreast of current affairs.

Re:Here's my entry

[XnavxeMiyyep]

Nobody really cares enough (I hope) to waste their time recompiling a list for you.
We'll see about that!

Opera features
Efficient surfing
Tabbed browsing: Surf the Web easier and faster by opening multiple Web pages within the same application window.

Integrated search: Search Google, eBay, Amazon and more with Opera's integrated search. You can also search directly in the address field using shortcuts (e.g. "g" for Google).

Pop-up blocking: Opera lets you control whether to block all pop-ups, or open only the ones that you have requested.

Fast Forward: Fast Forward will detect the most likely "next page" link and greatly simplify navigation in multi-page documents.

Password manager: Opera's password manager remembers your usernames and passwords so you will not have to.

Sessions: Save a collection of open pages as a session, for later retrieval, or start with the pages you had open when Opera was last closed.

Mouse gestures: Opera supports mouse gestures, allowing you to perform certain movements with the mouse in order to access commonly used features.

Quick preferences: Pressing F12 displays Opera's 'Quick preferences' menu to easily switch settings such as browser authentication, pop-up and cookie preferences.

Notes: Notes can be kept in conjunction with a Web site you want to refer to later, to remind you of any particular information you may like to review again.

Voice: The voice feature allows you to control Opera's interface by talking and to have documents read aloud. Voice is currently offered in English and runs on Windows 2000 and XP.

Security and privacy
Security bar: Opera displays security information inside the address bar, located next to the padlock icon that indicates the level of security present on a site.

Encryption: Opera supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) versions 2 and 3, and TLS. Opera offers automatic 128-bit encryption, the highest available security of any Web browser.

Delete private data: Opera can be configured to clear the history and cache when exiting, to protect your privacy. Any kind of private data can easily be erased at any time.

Cookie control: Opera gives you detailed control of what cookies to accept and reject, such as allowing for different set-ups for different servers.

Mail and Chat
Opera mail: Opera's built-in POP/IMAP E-mail client is a combined e-mail program, news reader, mailing list organizer and RSS/Atom newsfeed reader.

IRC chat: Communicate with people all over the world using Opera's IRC chat client. Chat privately or in rooms, or share files with your friends and family.

Customization
Drag and drop: Using the 'appearance' dialog you can make Opera look almost any way you want. Move buttons and search fields, add and remove toolbars, and so forth.

Skins: Opera skins can give your browser the look you want. Make the browser your own by giving it the icons and buttons of your choice.

Language: Opera's user interface is translated into a multitude of languages, and the language can be changed on the fly.

Accessibility
Zoom: With Opera you can zoom the contents of any Web page from 20%-1000% using the zoom dropdown or the + and - keys.

Text size and colors: Text size and link styling can be changed using Opera. Text color and background color can also be customized.

User style sheets: Opera comes with a set of ready-made style sheets, including accessibility style, that can be used to override a Web site's style set completely.

Web development
Standards support: Opera prides itself in supporting all major Web standards currently in use, including CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, WML 2.0, ECMAScript, DOM 2 and SVG 1.1 tiny.

Small-screen mode: When displaying a page in small-screen mode (Shift+F11) you can see how it will look on a mobile phone or other small-scre

Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox?

[StateOfTheUnion]

come on . . . get off your high horse . . . any company willing to purchase time on the jumbotron in Times Square on New Year's Eve is looking for a BIG publicity stunt to launch them into the big times . . . The fact that you think that this is merely a simple "thank you" from a happy company that is in touch with its customers speaks more of your naivete than it does of the strategies of Opera. Of course a big thank you is exactly what Opera's senior leadership want the userbase to think because they don't want to alienate their userbase.

But closer examination of their strategic intent indicates that they have bigger plans. Big jumbotron on New Year's Eve smells a lot like Monster.com buying commercial airtime during the superbowl. They are looking to kickstart an infective marketing campaign through a very prominent ad on a very prominent medium at a very prominent time.

Where is Opera compared with the other browsers? A niche player that serves as a focused differentiator (Read up on Classical Strategy (Michael Porter's five forces)). How can a niche player increase its market share? Only by becoming a differentiator or low cost leader . . . It's quite apparent that this marketing campaign is testing the waters to see how easy (or hard) it would be for Opera to shift gears.

If we consider the Boston consulting Group Matrix (BCG matrix), we can plot FireFox as a question mark (upper right quadrant) making moves to the upper left quadrant (star). It's logical to assume that Opera may be wondering if it can do the same thing . . . becuase it is likely that Opera currently hovers somewhere betweeb dog and star (between upper right and lower right quadrants).

In other words, Firefox has successfully broken Microsoft's stranglehold on the browser. Because customer's are now more likely to believe alternative browsers do possess adequate levels of Garvin's eight dimension of quality (Performance, Features, Conformance, Reliability, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality), it is likely that this creates an opportune time for another browser to test the waters to see if it can go mainstream. It is quite apparent to the casual observer with elementary understanding of classical business strategy that this is a marketing stunt to gain data on the receptiveness of the marketplace.

To think otherwise is to have bought into Opera's marketing agenda, to not uderstand classical strategic theory (I have intentionally ignored resource based systemic, and processual frameworks for strategies because I do not have the data to comment), or to simply be naive.

Huh?

[LFS.Morpheus]

(that's 54 square meters!)

Huh? What is a 'meter'? While your "square feet" reference sounds familiar, could you please provide a useful measurement of comparison, like percentage of a football field (no, not a soccer field), the number of the number of Big Macs that could fit on it, or the number of 54" widescreen TVs would be needed to make this giant TV. Also, how many Libraries of Congress does it ... something?

Thanks!