Firefox Goes for World Download Record 344
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."
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would I have to "pledge" anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since presumably my Firefox 2 will bug me to update to 3 as soon as it's released?
Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I pledge not to download it (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not the important record ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not committing to anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd really like to see continued support for the old style of searching in the url bar, too, but I doubt that will happen. And the new look is just uglier.
Re:Perhaps not the cleverest plan... (Score:5, Insightful)
Great Idea! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:4, Insightful)
Only the windows downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
"The worst PR is no PR." (Score:5, Insightful)
If they set a record - they'll be in the news.
If they are so successful that the servers go down temporarily - they'll definitely be in the news.
As you can see, just submitting the idea has put them in the news. This is a great idea for a company with growing market share.
What is the point of this? (Score:1, Insightful)
I mean it can't go down in the books as Firefox was downloaded by 2 million people on that day. Maybe 2 million times, out of which half was generated by 300,000 download scripts. I am not sure about you but to me that doesn't sound all that impressive.
It won't even helps spread firefox that much, as all the pledged downloadees will be firefox users.
Entirely pointless!
Possibly the only more pointless thing that this is my rather elaborate rant against it.
Press = good (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a cool idea. There are still lots of people who don't know there are other browsers in existence; when they open IE they say they're opening "the internet." Anything that makes the news and makes them aware of alternate browsers is good - especially if it's "hey this thing is really popular." For many people, that's the best argument for trying it.
Mozilla seems to have done pretty well by harnessing the power of fanatic users so far - remember the big newspaper ads? And check out the "pledge map" on the site. Think how proud you'd be to see that you're one of a very few people in your country who has pledged to download it. Kind of a mix of national pride and geek pride.
Every web developer's dream is a world where all users have more standards-compliant browsers, and IE is forced to follow suit. I say hooray for almost anything that makes that closer to reality.Re:Why would I have to "pledge" anything? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?
Press releases, viral marketing, and publicity stunts like this are a big reason why worldwide Firefox market share is somewhere in the 30% range. Yeah, you've gotta have a solid product to begin with, but more open source projects would do well to emulate Mozilla's marketing and branding accomplishments.
Also, your post implies that Firefox will somehow be rushed out the door before it's ready, but if you've been following along you know that's very far from correct. Even the "download pledge" page says they don't know the date yet.
Re:I pledge not to download it (Score:3, Insightful)
captcha: divisive
Re:I pledge not to download it (Score:3, Insightful)
Some way of reverting to the old functionality would be nice.
Opera publicity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they need more silly publicity stunts like this one.
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patch Tuesday (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm not committing to anything. (Score:4, Insightful)
So... instead of wondering if it will crash, why not find out?
Re:I pledge not to download it (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't care, so they're not snooping around (I don't live with them normally, there was a death in the family so I've come back home for a bit) but they don't appreciate my youporn stuff popping up in their face because of that silly autocomplete stuff. How can I got back to the old way?
Re:Perhaps not the cleverest plan... (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. On the Big Day, it's guaranteed that someone will announce it here, and within minutes we'll slashdot the server.
Someone else suggested getting the current beta version, because it seems to work just fine. This won't help their server, though, because on the Big Day, your beta version will check, find that there's an upgrade, ask if you want to download it - and you'll join in the slashdotting.
They should just put the server on a slow net connection. That way, the bottleneck would be upstream of them, and we'd just get "no connection" messages asking if we'd like to try again. Only N of us would be able to get through at any given time, keeping their server up, and frustrating their rabid fans.
Or maybe they're just expecting that the can handle the onslaught. Whatever happens, you'll read about it here.