Mozilla firefox--Missionary Promotion

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The non-traditional company hopes to gain market share and stand out from the competition with a new version of the Firefox browser.

In the summer of 2004, 10 of technicians huddled in the office of Mountain View, Calif., facing a tricky task. They are embarking on an ambitious plan to create a browser that can compete with Microsoft ie. But after spending 2 million of billions of dollars, they have no budget to build a popular consumer brand.

So they decided to play a marketing gamble. The group of people who set up the Mozilla company after that was made up of hardcore supporters who believed in "Open-source software development". Here, the power to complete the project comes from a large number of developer armies, not the company's team of engineers. So they want to know if the same method can be used to build a brand.

So Asa Dotzler, one of the team members, worked with engineer Blake Ross on the web to find blogs and websites willing to take beta Firefox. Within two days, they contacted about 100 websites and asked if they could add a "download Firefox" button to the homepage. Surprisingly, 85% of the sites agreed. Dotzler then built a community for supporters and continued to use e-mail to spread the word. Within weeks, a group of volunteers set up a "Spread Firefox" website, where they could get their own buttons and discuss new ways to spread the word.

The challenge of growth

The gamble won. Firefox is ready to complete the test phase within one months, and more than 10,000 sites have the "Download Firefox" button. Today this number is over 65000. Firefox has not only captured 10% of its market share from Microsoft in two years, but has surpassed other browsers, such as opera and Apple's Safari, and the two-plus share has less than 3%.

Even Microsoft cannot ignore Firefox. Earlier this month, a research and development team from Mozilla was invited to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to discuss how Firefox can run better under Windows Vista operating system.

But when Mozilla prepares to release the next version of Firefox in October, they still face the biggest challenge: moving to the mainstream. Firefox's share of the market, though impressive, has been flat since the rapid growth in 2004 and 2005. This is because Mozilla has touched most of Firefox's natural backers-college students, people who hate Microsoft and technology geeks, analysts say.

The threat of IE

In order to continue to grow, Firefox must be successful in the transformation of the network users of the work. These are the people who don't know or care about what is open source, and many of them think that landing on the Internet is simply clicking on the ubiquitous, huge lowercase icon "E". "The problem is that IE does not depend on it," said Geoff Johnston, an analyst at WebSideStory, an Internet analytics firm. I don't think they (Firefox) can reach 15% ".

The challenge will be greater once Microsoft launches its latest version of Ie,mozilla. Microsoft browsers already contain many of the innovations that are different from Firefox, including "tabbed browsing" or opening several sites without opening multiple windows. Microsoft has imitated many Firefox features, such as Pop-up Blocker. Some even worry that Firefox will lose market share.

Mozilla's guys have faced the challenge of market share in the past. The core code that formed Mozilla was associated with the advent of the 90, the ill-fated Netscape, and was only a setback-a bleak figure that had come before AOL's Time Warner bought, cut funds and cut back on business. Firefox starts with an Open-source project that has been supported by Netscape and AOL.

Volunteer Army

Meanwhile, Mitchell Baker, who organised Netscape and the AOL community, was sacked in a wave of corporate restructurings. When AOL announced that it was no longer supporting the Mozilla project (although it later gave 2 million of dollars in aid), Mitchell Baker and Lotus Notes developer Mitch Kapor organized a nonprofit Mozilla.

Dotzler says the development of the Mozilla community has not been hampered. "We know we will continue to innovate," he said. "As a community coordinator, he supported and organised different volunteer groups and made sure their voices were heard by Mozilla," he said. "You can trust us." "This statement is ensured by the unusual organizational structure of Mozilla. The money for operations comes from advertising revenue from Google toolbars in browsers. But because it is a non-profit Mozilla, profitability is not the goal.

The group focuses on what they consider their mission: making the Internet a better place. In open source world, it is very difficult to attract venture capital with an idealistic original idea, and Mozilla is outstanding, just like the Godzilla dinosaur, which is the mascot symbol and the grin.

Lizard Fighter

Mozilla's "figuratively lizard Wrangler" and President Baker Run most of the company's architecture. She's different from your usual startup manager, but not just because she's a lady. She has bright red hair, while the other side is cut short, almost always wearing purple clothes. She was serious about the community, and each of the 60 employees who claimed to have worked in Mozilla and paid their salaries represented a number of people who had unpaid salaries but were also working for the company's mission.

Hundreds of people have actually formed Mozilla's software development community, and hundreds of people have become marketing groups in the real sense. They found some unusual ways. Some people put the "download" button on their blog, some people bought a lot of cheap CDs, the software burned in the street wearing Fox clothing, the way of guerrilla marketing spread.

A large group of loyalists spent 250,000 of dollars on two-page browser ads in the New York Times. A group of students at Oregon State State University made a 220-square-foot Firefox crop circle on the farm. Dotzler and his team have come up with ideas, but more of what they think is already being done.

Missionary Zeal

To expand the existing user base, Mozilla still needs something more than a well-planned campaign. Because the new version of IE is considered more competitive than Firefox, Firefox needs to continue to evolve and become more than just a browser. Seth Godin, a writer who wrote internet books such as Sgt is the New big, says Mozilla needs to incorporate tools such as tag features or tools that link to ebay's Skype call service, which helps friends connect with each other. The key to this idea is that the more friends you use Firefox, the more valuable your browser will be. That's one of the reasons why you're a "Firefox preacher". Mozilla doesn't give much detail about the upcoming Firefox2, but Dotzler says there will be new features that are not available in existing browsers.

You can be sure that Dotzler and his partners will rely on millions of people who are already using the browser. There are 63 million people born in baby boomers, 25 million senior urban netizens. The best way for Mozilla to reach them is to have them install Firefox for children and relatives who are more interested in technology.

Dotzler recalls his mother in 2002, when their careers were just beginning: when she found the Yellow Pages website to look for a company address, he gaped-because all the pop-up ads were interfering with her computer. "It's a company that's trying to do something good for you," said Reid Hoffman, chief executive of Mozilla's board and social networking site LinkedIn. "They need more people to know." ”