An Open Letter, Bravo
Dear Firefox Community,
I need your help here: how do you best pimp Firefox in three minutes?
Slashdot recently posed this question in regard to Linux, and at the time, I mostly ignored it, because… well… I didn’t find it particularly relevant.
But then, in a coffee shop this weekend, I was getting my morning cup o’ awakeness, and the woman behind me in line started up a conversation: “Oh, I have Firefox installed! But I was going to delete it. I like your shirt though…”
I smiled and said “No! You should start using it! We just released a new version.”
She asked “Well… why should I use Firefox?”
I first said “Well, because it’s more secure than Internet Explorer,” and then I quoted the IE was insecure for “like hundreds of days last year,” and Firefox was insecure for “like a week or something.”
She said “Wow, that’s really cool.” But then seemed underimpressed.
I then said “It’s also one of those ‘feel-good’ things, you know; Firefox is built and supported by a community of people, and we work really hard to a build a browser with only users and their online experience in mind.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” she said. She then said “I originally downloaded it because Safari wouldn’t display something I wanted to see.”
Before I could really respond, it was time to order my coffee, and then since she was behind me, we both got distracted, and never were able to really finish the conversation.
So, my question to you: if you only had two to three minutes to talk up Firefox and get someone to keep it on their machine, how would you explain why it’s the best browser around to someone who doesn’t care a bout (or maybe even understand) “attack surfaces” and “days of exposure,” and gets “The Community” in the abstract, but… not enough to make it relevant to their personal livfe.
Which aspects of the ‘fox we all know and love so well would you focus on in 150 seconds?
Aaand… go!
Sincerely,
Your Friendly Build Engineer
P.S. I’ve also been trying to figure out whether or not she was flirting with me, but… that’s another post altogether.