Mozilla Firefox viral marketing gaffe
p2pnet news | Advertising:- Compared to Internet Explorer users, Firefox users are "21% less likely to fish".
Really?
Not really.
It was among ’statistics’ included in a Mozilla ‘Fight Against Boredom’ viral marketing campaign, says TechCrunch, and included others such as compared to you know what users, Firefox devotees are
- 21% less likely to be a sales representative or agent at their current place of business.
- 45% more likely to have gone on vacation in San Francisco within the last 2 years.
- 33% less likely to live with others suffering from high cholesterol.
- 6% less likely to have eaten any meal at Chick-fil-A within the last 7 days.
"There’s even a fake blog complete with mocked up Mozilla criticisms that is pretending to report on the viral campaign as well," says TechCrunch, going on:
The site reports that Tay Zonday of ‘Chocolate Rain’ fame and Leslie Hall of ‘Gem Sweater’ are in the video, but I’m sure I saw a Ninja there, perhaps readers can put a name to a few more participants as well.
Funny.
But then the phony stats degenerate, going on to include statemenst such as Firefoxers users are
24% less likely to live with others suffering from heart disease.
38% less likely to live with others suffering from breast cancer.
Not so funny, and in a comment post to the item, "I want to apologize to anyone who was upset or offended by some of the stats on the not yet final website for this campaign," says Paul Kim, Mozilla vp of marketing for Mozilla.
He adds:
"The list Techcrunch referenced was posted without a final review by Mozilla and wasn’t intended to be published as is. We’re working right now to correct this on the site, which goes live in a final form later today."
When we went for a look at 10:55 am Pacific, we were greeted with , "This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document requested. Either you supplied the wrong credentials (e.g., bad password), or your browser doesn’t understand how to supply the credentials required."
We tried it the Google cache and Firefox was immediately locked up by the demand for an admission password and we had to close the tab.
However, behind it we could see, "Rise up. Help other [sic] downloada [sic] interesting life," as per the pic on the left.
Also see:
TechCrunch – Mozilla Secretly Launches A Viral Campaign For Firefox, January 7, 2008
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January 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
that is a stupid idea in the first place, but i dont care. wont keep me from my favorite browser.
January 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Sorry.
Using Opera and Safari at the moment.
I can’t stand Firefox’s extensions BS.
and I don’t think it is any more secure than Opera or Safari or even IE.
I think Internet Security starts with the user being smart enough not to go blindly surfing the web without using a little common sense.
Also I hat Virual Marketing.
Its stupid, pointless and a waste of internet electrons
January 9th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Opera ftw without a question. Firefox doesnt even pass acid2!
January 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
sorry, but firefox is great. people love to hate on things that suddenly become popular, but ive been using it for several years, and its fantastic. dont like the extensions, DONT USE THEM. have a memory leak, then just uninstall the extension that is causing it. (ie tab, fasterfox, a few others are known problems)
yes, on an everyday basis, i am constanly like “oh noes teh firefox didnt pass acid2 what shall i do?”
opera is great. what we should be hating is the monopolistic IE6/7, and other software like it.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
what the hell is a “viral campaign”?
January 9th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Men on the flatlands.
January 10th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Opera is nice, but really too slow with Javascripts, and not so good either with resized animated gifs.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
“what the hell is a âviral campaignâ?”
At a guess; A campaign which disseminates in a way similar to that of a biological virus.