Firefox Promotion : The "Real World"

SpreadFirefox.com, a Firefox advocacy site run by the Mozilla group, today announced a new promotional campaign.

The website plans to raise enough funds to take out a full page advert in the New York Times, a US national paper. The group hopes that taking out an advert in such a high profile and widely read paper will highlight the fact that there is an alternative to Internet Explorer; equally, the project hope to raise the profile of Open Source software.

The fund raising and advertisement will mark a significant development in terms of Mozilla's promotion of Firefox. Previously, advertising had been online only. Taking out a full page advert will open Firefox up to a much larger and "wider" audience. Interestingly, the advert will also be the "first" national print advertisement for an Open Source project.

All of the people who donate (donations start from $10) will see their names listed on the advert. The group aims to get 2,500 donations within 10 days, yet like previous campaigns, will no doubt see much more than this target. Extra funds will be put towards 1.0 launch marketing, which is expected mid-November.

Firefox, as well as other browser alternatives like Opera, has done especially well in the past 6 months, slowly gobbling up Internet Explorer's dominant market share. Continued success could provoke Microsoft into releasing an update to Internet Explorer much sooner than 2006 (Longhorn), something Microsoft currently denies it will do.

View: Donate towards the ad | SpreadFirefox.com