4 ms·

> It's been incredible to read the well written blog posts that appeal to a variety of audiences. I enjoyed the read, but this is somewhat irrelevant unless a

> It's been incredible to read the well written blog posts that appeal to a variety of audiences. I enjoyed the read, but this is somewhat irrelevant unless a variety of people actually read it. I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog.

bpicolo 9y ago
> I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog People find it through social media channels anyway. I'm only aware of it because of HN/reddit
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
  I realize how they get there, and I went the same path. However, it's also well established most people don't get past the headlines (or the first paragraph). I'm venturing a guess that most people that read HN currently work or have previously worked in tech. Same with the people that managed to get to it through reddit. I think it's also a somewhat safe guess that only people interested in the topic to begin with would be reading the article. It's the top bar ad on reddit for me right now (the topic, not this blog post). All the commentary is how people dislike it and are reverting to a prior version. Many are simply because it looks different. There is one person who talked tech, and in typical reddit fashion, he was called a corporate shill. In no way am I saying the content is bad, I just struggle to view it as any significant or meaningful marketing strategy.
sampl 9y ago
They probably don’t read it regularly, but they might get annoyed at browser slowness one day and Google “chrome firefox which is faster”.
- dyukqu 9y ago
  Should they "Google" it? How about "DuckDuckGo"ing it? Edit: Not trolling, pretty serious. Would Google allow the webpages favouring Firefox over Chrome to show up on the top search results (or even the first page)? I'm not sure about it.
  - tyleraldrich 9y ago
    I doubt any of my non-technical friends know what DDG is.
  - Garvey 9y ago
    A quick google search suggests that yes, they would allow this.
    - librvf 9y ago
      I doubt they're manipulating this sort of thing. But, when you're engineering search results to manipulate public perception, you don't just obliterate all of the undesirable content with hamfisted obviousness. You just weight the content differently. Maybe you ensure that anyone already looking for that content can find it, but ensure that a more generic search is favorable. Maybe you just manipulate the heap to ensure the top result is the good one. Maybe you merely aim for a favorable ratio of desirable to undesirable content. Consider: "best search engine" The results are full of discussions about alternate search engines. Both duckduckgo and dogpile make the front page. Yet, the #1 result is an article about how Google is the most popular search engine: https://www.reliablesoft.net/top-10-search-engines-in-the-world/ https://www.reliablesoft.net/top-10-search-engines-in-the-wo... Is that true? Sure. Is the result manipulated? Probably not. But if I was google and I was going to manipulate a search result, that's exactly how I'd do it. I'd maintain the illusion of impartiality by presenting lots of alternatives, but I'd ensure the most prominent result was the one I wanted. In any case: a quick search is insufficient to detect search bias and proves nothing.
emodendroket 9y ago
Most people who read blog articles get there from social media or search engines rather than being a regular reader of the blog. This seems to be a pretty established form of marketing.
simplicio 9y ago
Dunno how well it works, but a pretty common strategy for tech products is to pitch to technical people and hope that "the masses" tend to adapt whatever their more technically savy friends are doing. Plus Mozilla is a non-profit, so they're probably more interested in their reputation specifically amongst HN readers and the like than they would be if they were a commercial company just trying to sell as many widgets as possible.
awj 9y ago
> I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog. The point, though, is that they could. If you wanted to drop links to them with more details about why the should be excited about Firefox again, Mozilla is actually producing those. This is one of those things that only seems unimportant until people stop doing it. Then you find out it was actually a pretty big deal.
- eitland 9y ago
  Mozilla has definitely done a good job so far. If we do our part then everyone might be rewarded with a healthier ecosystem over the next months. (And "everyone " includes die hard Chrome users as well as people forced to use IE at work.) Edit: what I mean is that all consumers generally benefits from healthy competition.

bpicolo 9y ago

> I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog People find it through social media channels anyway. I'm only aware of it because of HN/reddit

lloyd-christmas 9y ago
I realize how they get there, and I went the same path. However, it's also well established most people don't get past the headlines (or the first paragraph). I'm venturing a guess that most people that read HN currently work or have previously worked in tech. Same with the people that managed to get to it through reddit. I think it's also a somewhat safe guess that only people interested in the topic to begin with would be reading the article. It's the top bar ad on reddit for me right now (the topic, not this blog post). All the commentary is how people dislike it and are reverting to a prior version. Many are simply because it looks different. There is one person who talked tech, and in typical reddit fashion, he was called a corporate shill. In no way am I saying the content is bad, I just struggle to view it as any significant or meaningful marketing strategy.

sampl 9y ago

They probably don’t read it regularly, but they might get annoyed at browser slowness one day and Google “chrome firefox which is faster”.

dyukqu 9y ago
Should they "Google" it? How about "DuckDuckGo"ing it? Edit: Not trolling, pretty serious. Would Google allow the webpages favouring Firefox over Chrome to show up on the top search results (or even the first page)? I'm not sure about it.
- tyleraldrich 9y ago
  I doubt any of my non-technical friends know what DDG is.
- Garvey 9y ago
  A quick google search suggests that yes, they would allow this.
  - librvf 9y ago
    I doubt they're manipulating this sort of thing. But, when you're engineering search results to manipulate public perception, you don't just obliterate all of the undesirable content with hamfisted obviousness. You just weight the content differently. Maybe you ensure that anyone already looking for that content can find it, but ensure that a more generic search is favorable. Maybe you just manipulate the heap to ensure the top result is the good one. Maybe you merely aim for a favorable ratio of desirable to undesirable content. Consider: "best search engine" The results are full of discussions about alternate search engines. Both duckduckgo and dogpile make the front page. Yet, the #1 result is an article about how Google is the most popular search engine: https://www.reliablesoft.net/top-10-search-engines-in-the-world/ https://www.reliablesoft.net/top-10-search-engines-in-the-wo... Is that true? Sure. Is the result manipulated? Probably not. But if I was google and I was going to manipulate a search result, that's exactly how I'd do it. I'd maintain the illusion of impartiality by presenting lots of alternatives, but I'd ensure the most prominent result was the one I wanted. In any case: a quick search is insufficient to detect search bias and proves nothing.

emodendroket 9y ago

Most people who read blog articles get there from social media or search engines rather than being a regular reader of the blog. This seems to be a pretty established form of marketing.

simplicio 9y ago

Dunno how well it works, but a pretty common strategy for tech products is to pitch to technical people and hope that "the masses" tend to adapt whatever their more technically savy friends are doing. Plus Mozilla is a non-profit, so they're probably more interested in their reputation specifically amongst HN readers and the like than they would be if they were a commercial company just trying to sell as many widgets as possible.

awj 9y ago

> I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog. The point, though, is that they could. If you wanted to drop links to them with more details about why the should be excited about Firefox again, Mozilla is actually producing those. This is one of those things that only seems unimportant until people stop doing it. Then you find out it was actually a pretty big deal.

eitland 9y ago
Mozilla has definitely done a good job so far. If we do our part then everyone might be rewarded with a healthier ecosystem over the next months. (And "everyone " includes die hard Chrome users as well as people forced to use IE at work.) Edit: what I mean is that all consumers generally benefits from healthy competition.