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Firefox Goes for World Download Record

Posted by samzenpus on from the record-for-the-lamest-marketing-campaign dept.

Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."

11 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Patch Tuesday by pjt33 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What's the current record? I'd expect MS service packs to set a pretty high bar. Also, how are they counting? If Debian get Firefox 3 through into testing on the day (which I doubt), would an install via aptitude count, or are they only counting direct downloads from Mozilla?

    1. Re:Patch Tuesday by unlametheweak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would suspect "software downloads" would imply an independent application and not a patch or a service pack. I'm sure they have their servers prepared to get Slashdotted and Digged, etc for the marketing event. Though I wonder why Microsoft with it's money couldn't hire a marketing firm to think up something savvy like that for Internet Explorer.

      It would also be a great opportunity to promote bittorent as a mass downloading medium. Too bad it doesn't seem to be in the plan.

    2. Re:Patch Tuesday by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Bittorent doesn't allow for tracking downloads. It's one of the things that really holds it back for general use for a lot of companies. For example, a lot of internet TV shows would LOVE to use bittorent to reduce their download overhead (which is HUGE), but how are they supposed to determine their "ratings" if they're not sure how many donwloads they've had? They used to talk a lot about this over at DLTV.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    3. Re:Patch Tuesday by shift3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I bet WOW patches are high ranking. One problem with this is, how many people actually download from ONLY the HTTP source? The wow Patcher uses a BitTorrent based P2P system. There is a rather high chance that you will get little, if any from their Direct HTTP Download source on any given patch day. Now, as the time that the patch was released and the time that you are downloading increases, this amount will increase as not nearly as many people will have the P2P Updater running.
      --
      You fall and receive 6334 damage.
      You die.
  2. followed by most rollbacks to version 2... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    because many popular plugins are not 3.0 ready :-(

    1. Re:followed by most rollbacks to version 2... by nem75 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How the hell is this "+5 Interesting"? There are roughly a gazillion of FF2 extensions out there, many of them have not been actively developed anymore for months or longer. So of course many (I'd rather say most) are not available for FF3 yet - and will probably never be.

      The core extensions (yes, the definition of that term varies from user to user, I'm aware of that - but only to a point) are available though. Like Adblock Plus, Download Statusbar etc.

      Others are available for FF3 from the developer's homepage only and cannot be found on the Mozilla site yet, e.g. because the extension itself is still beta. See Firebug for instance.

      Anyway, I don't see that massive rollback happening.

  3. Why should we? by greenpete · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have used Firefox for a few years and love it's potential. But it has always been buggy and I was forced into v3 when I updated Ubuntu recently and I think it's got worse! It crashes more now, they have changed features that I loved (like the way you save U/N and P/W) and on top of that most of my plugins don't work anymore :-(

    1. Re:Why should we? by Kattspya · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's the most brilliant thing I've seen in it so far (I've used the portable beta 3 for about an hour). When the password prompt isn't a window you can make sure the pasword is correct before storing it.

  4. Re:I pledge not to download it by Zebedeu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A not only history, it also searches your bookmarks, which is something that I've always wondered why it wasn't implemented before.

    Now you don't have to navigate your deep bookmark folders for that link, just start typing the name and it appears directly under your cursor.

  5. Not the goal by Nerdposeur · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would also be a great opportunity to promote bittorent as a mass downloading medium. Too bad it doesn't seem to be in the plan.

    Could they track the number of downloads if they used bittorrent? Also, if their goal is a record number of downloads for Firefox, do they want to set up an additional hurdle for people? "First, you have to download and install one of these other programs. No wait, we can explain why. Come back."

  6. Re:I pledge not to download it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I would dare say this is one of the biggest improvements to the web browsing experience in the last several years. unless of course you already used Opera or even Internet Explorer. Both have had this features for quite a while, in this case FF is sadly playing catchup.