Firefox Upgrade: Does Social Media Help Get the Word Out?

According to a recent Mashable blog entry, Firefox will no longer crash when I view sites that use Flash.  This is great news for me because my team visits hundreds or thousands of websites each week at work!  Firefox is our browser of choice because of the many add-ons that aid in productivity.

I've been resisting an upgrade to the latest version of Firefox because one of my favorite add-ons, IE Tab, was not upgraded to work at the same time.  Some sites simply don't work in Firefox; our company Intranet is one of them.

Back in March, Mozilla (creator of Firefox) did an analysis of how quickly people convert to the newest version of the software.  According to their chart about 43% of the users upgraded within the first week or so.

How and why do users upgrade quickly?

• "Upgrade offer" - pop-up window alerting all users that a new version of the software is available
• Blog - probably only true "fans" of the organization and tech people read the blog
• Facebook Page - again, probably only true fans get info here
• Twitter - same deal

I know I ignore the upgrade offer until I'm sure that my add-ons are also updated and compatible with the new version.  The Firefox blog contained a list of common reasons why people are slow to upgrade and what they'll do about it.  It's great that the organization is aware of the problems and working on solutions!                    

image credit:  Mozilla Firefox blog