Spreading Firefox

The new Spread Firefox is live and visiting http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. This site will remain here at http://archive-sfx.spreadfirefox.com as an archive of the first two years of Spread Firefox.

Over the coming days and weeks, this site will stop accepting new content and accounts and will become essentially read-only with all of the new Firefox spreading happening at the new site.

We're almost ready to flip the switch, pull the lever, press the shiny big red button!

As you all have been reading here for some time, the new Spread Firefox is an action-oriented, project-based platform. We're transitioning away from a platform dominated by discussion to one that focuses on taking action to spread Firefox.

This means that blogging is going away, to be replaced by projects. Projects are like mini-sites within Spread Firefox that give you the tools to manage specific activities to spread Firefox. Anyone can create one of these projects which come with a discussion forum, a mailing list, a project calendar, a document and image repository, etc.

Those projects that get traction will be featured on the front page of Spread Firefox. Projects that look like they need help getting support can also be featured on the front page.

In addition to Spread Firefox member projects, the Mozilla Marketing team are increasingly running their projects and programs at Spread Firefox. You'll find Mozilla Events, Mozilla Materials and Logos, Stats and Metrics, and more, all running out of Spread Firefox.

You all are encouraged to sign up with projects or programs that interest you and to create projects yourself.

The transition to the new site is going to be happening in a matter of hours. Your bookmarks and the URL http://spreadfirefox.com will take you to the new site. You'll have to re-login but your accounts, including your affiliate points, your private messages, and profiles should all be intact. The old Spread Firefox will be archived at a new URL, probably http://archive.spreadfirefox.com and will, sometime over the next few months be transitioned to a read-only site. We'll post links to the old site as soon as the URLs are updated and we'll keep you updated on the changes to the archive so that you have time to transition any of your documents to the new site or to re-locate your personal blogs.

In addition to the transition to the new platform, we're also going to be introducing you all to a larger team of Spread Firefox leaders, from Mozilla, Glaxstar, and the broader community. I'm still going to be around, but my involvement with the site-wide project will wane and I'll shift my focus to specific projects.

You all are what makes Firefox such a success. You've brought us 130 million Firefox users and helped make Firefox a household name. With Firefox 3 ever-closer at hand, you all will be the ones to take us to 200 million users and beyond. Thanks to all of you for your amazing efforts over the last three years and I look forward to everything you all will accomplish in the next three years.

- Asa

After an overwhelming response and some tough decision-making, the winner of Operation Firefox has been announced! Winner Agent R.W. from Georgia Tech University and team plastered the giant Firefox logo on their school's football stadium for thousands to bask in.

The Firefox logo soared to new heights on runner up Agent Teren's plane.

The Firefox sticker also graced the set of the New York City Opera, as well as a concert bus at an Iowa State tailgate. You can check out all the amazing pictures here or check out the Operation Firefox blog for the full scoop. We want to thank all our special agents for their creativity and participation! Over and out!

This is cross-post from http://newsfx.spreadfirefox.com/tistheseason2007, since we're still in the transition phase from the old to the new SpreadFirefox.com:

I can think of two simple ways anyone can help spread the word about Firefox this holiday season:

1. Bring "Firefox Home for the Holidays" by helping family and friends install Firefox on their computers and show them how to use some of the features.  Show them you care by telling them why Firefox is the browser of choice this holiday season... and help them customize it with a few Add-ons.

2. Give "The Gift of Firefox" by sending family and friends Firefox holiday e-cards with your persnalized message and a link to download and install Firefox.  You can even put Firefox on a USB key or get a CD and other great Firefox gear (check out the Mozilla Store at http://store.mozilla.org) and send a nice holiday package!

Those are just a couple of things that came to mind, but I look forward to hearing more great ideas from our community!  We also need to get some new holiday images together for people to use, so if you know of any artists that want to help create some holiday art with Firefox flare... please get them involved! 

I look forward to hearing everyone's stories throughout the 2007 holiday season... so please share with us how you plan to spread Firefox with some holiday cheer this year!

Happy Holidays!

- Jay & the SFX team

When someone at Mozilla sneezes, there's someone somewhere writing about it. From Twitter to the New York Times and everything in between, Mozilla attracts an amazing volume of coverage.

This volume is both good and bad. We don't have the marketing and pr budgets of the software mega-companies so the press buzz we get organically is wonderful. The downside is that because of the sheer volume of coverage, it's difficult to follow it all and make sure that Mozilla is being represented fairly.

What Mozilla lacks in marketing and pr budget, however, it more than makes up in the enthusiastic and capable community of participants who have already brought Firefox to 130 million users and made Mozilla a household name.

For the Record (FTR) is a community-driven public relations and press response program that will harness the energy and knowledge of the Mozilla community to 1) catalog all of the online coverage of the Mozilla Project, 2) develop a sustainable team of spokespeople who feel empowered to respond to online coverage, and 3) build a collection of talking points and responses to frequently asked questions.

To start participating today, simply add fortherecord@mozilla.org to your email address-book and forward blog posts or articles about Mozilla projects or products that are a) factually inaccurate or misleading, b) relevant to Mozilla, its products, or the Open Web, but fail to mention Mozilla, or c) thoughtful stories that are factually accurate and favorable, or at least fair about Firefox. Please include a short note explaining why you've forwarded the story.

The For the Record team, Mozilla's marketing team, PR representatives, or various spokespeople will take it from there.

Want to join the For the Record team, and help us further develop the program and write a set of FAQs and other materials that will make it easier for in the Mozilla community to better tell the Mozilla story and respond effectively when needed? Well, that's easy too. Simply subscribe to the mailing list. Please note, unless you're really interested analyzing the flow of Mozilla news and helping to distill relevant content into documentation, this probably isn't the list for you. If, on the other hand, that sound like great fun, we'd love to have you involved.

This special, extended, Air Mozilla Live broadcast will feature guests from the Creative Commons, as they get ready to celebrate their 5th anniversary; the Mozilla application team, sharing expertise in extension development; and the Mozilla Mobile Platform team, discussing Mozilla's mobile goals, target platforms, and next steps.

Join us, this Wednesday for our live community discussion and "call-in" show.

Who: The Mozilla community, host Asa Dotzler, and guests Melissa Reeder, Mark Finkle, Dave Townsend, and Christian Sejersen.
When: Wednesday, November 28, from 14:00:00 - 15:30:00 PST (UTC -8.)
Where: View the webcast at air.mozilla.com and participate on IRC, IM, or email.

• IRC: join the discussion on irc.mozilla.org #airmozilla
• IM: instant message your questions to the AIM/YIM/GTalk screenname airmozilla.
• email: send in your questions before and during the show to airmozilla@mozilla.com.

Air Mozilla is now streaming 24/7 with a new live show every month (or as close to that as makes sense.) If you've got ideas for shows, please email us and let us know. Even better, if you're a part of the Mozilla community and you'd like to be interviewed or present on our live broadcast, let us know.

We're making good progress on the next iteration of Spread Firefox and we'd like to expand the number of people participating so today we're opening up the SFX2 beta to everyone here.

You can log in with your same SFX username and password.

The two links you'll want to check out first are Rhian's intro to the new project structure and the project I created for SFX2 beta feedback.

The major change you'll notice right off is that we've rearranged SFX from a site that revolved around blog posts and discussion, to a site that revolves around projects and the tools needed to run those projects.

This is the first pass and we've no doubt got a long ways to go before we have everything we want, but it's been far too long since we refreshed things here and so we'd rather err on the side of opening it up early than find ourselves in the new year without a new SFX.

So, please head over to the SFX2 beta site, poke around, and let us know what's working and what's not.