Impact Mozilla

Mozlilla Firefox is no doubt among the top notch downloaded,used and preffered web browsers, and the single biggest reason for its huge popularity is the very nature of its design and development.
Being an open source project Mozilla finds a lot of enthusiastic people who are the end users of mozilla firefox and hence they know it better that what are they expecting form it. And at mozilla its those people who help in designing and developing the browser.But this is just one face of the coin, though mozilla enjoys a very large fan(user)base still if we try to realize just how good it is, it becomes evident that it is not utilising that much of userbase as it should have.
To increase the userbase of mozilla the target audience may be charatorised in the following three categories.
i.) Those people who don't download mozilla and hence don't use it at all.
ii.) Those people who download mozilla but either don't install it or don't use it over time.
iii.) Those people who have many browsers and they are using different browsers for different purposes such as surfing/banking services etc.
Now based on these target audiences we have the following goals
i.) Let the people who don't download mozilla know that what they are missing by not trying mozilla.
ii.) Retain the users who are not using mozilla even after downloading or installing it.
iii.) Let the people realize that everything they can do with any other web-browser you can do with mozilla firefox and with more ease,efficiency and fun.
iv.) Concentrating on markets where the internet is still in developing stage and where the large part of growing number of browsers reside(particularly in India and China).
To get these goals we have three key assets.
(i) Open Source Project. As in mythology the greatest advantage that mozilla enjoys lies in its own spirit. By being an open source project it acts as a platform for thousands of talented people from all over the world contributing for its designing and development.
(ii.)Community Support. The second key advantages that mozilla enjoys is the very strong community support. There are a lot of 3rd party applicaitons popularly termed as add-ons which make Mozilla the wonderful web browser it is.
(iii.)Mozilla foundation itself. The popularity that mozilla has gained and the faith that it has earned is one of the most important asset of mozilla and it can be utilised for our goal of making it "the web browser of the new technological world".
Now when we have our target audiences identified and our goals quantified lets see what must be done in order to achieve them.
(i). Sponcor and participate in Techno-management-fests : People love to use a product or service if they can personally attach themselves to it. If mozilla sponcors some technical events in 5 IITs n similar colleges in India it will not only get 2500-3000 extremely talented people to be working for the further development of mozilla, rather it will also give the best form of exposure, word of mouth publicity they will invite each and every one they know to come,see and use their work.And we know that People use a browser(or for that matter any service) when they find out that everybody around them is using it and loving it,when they find out they this is something which
is so close to them and that its so much related to them they tend to use it, and they carry a lot of people with them.
(ii). Social Networking Sites : Social networking sites like orkut/myspace are among the sites recieving most traffic now a days and having active participation on these sites help them people feel that it is something very close to them instead of just posting mozilla related blogs/news only on mozilla blog make active forums/communities on orkut and myspace and get more connected to people.
(iii.) Invite People for challanges : People love challanges( remember the cola war at time of John Scully), finad out the best points of mozilla and then ask people what is that other browsers can do and mozilla cann't and then let the results be big and discussed.
(iv). Change the Way of Advertising : The common pay-per-click type advertisements don't affect the reach of browser much anyways. [http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2008/09/16/do-ads-driving-firefox-downloads-affect-firefox-downloads/ ] So a better option would be if a few famous sites hold a banner like "This site is best viewed in Mozilla Firefox". This kind of advertisements attract the users very quickly coz they make users confident that mozilla is a versatile browser while others are not.
(v).Change the way Firefox is Bundeled : Instead providing the user with the browser and then requiring him to download addons that he need to get the best of mozilla a better option would be to attach a few add-ons which help the user realize that "just how good a browser, mozilla is ". coz the mozilla blog identifies that the number of users using mozilla for the first week is close to people using it a longer period of time, if we make it easy for a novice to come,download,install and use the browser for a few days before he decides that now he needs some more, he will definately be more than willing to give it a try.
These five steps if taken tact-fully will no doubt help in transforming mozilla from a Great Web Browser to The Greatest Web Browser.