Why do you promote software?

You purchase this shiny new security (or otherwise) software or perhaps you download some new freeware and it's great.

You immediately feel this urge to share it with the world, you tell all your friends about it, you post about your discovery on forums, on the usenet and more. The question is why?

Perhaps I suppose it's the urge to share a thing of beauty , to help others, to boast your rep as a guru of software or all of the above.

If it's a commerical product, perhaps you hope that more customers will mean more money for the product to be developed. Or perhaps it's a way to justify your purchase.

DItto for freeware I guess, since some users will donate.

More users of the same product will also lead to what Economics called network effects/externalities (not exactly the same but..), this means the benefit one gains from using a product increases, the more users there are of the same product.

In the software world, this means more 'mods', sharing of rulesets etc, more knowledgable people around to compare notes with, stronger user community, more idea to add functionality to the software , more testing etc.

Take firefox, people promote it because it's good and they want to share it. Others have an agenda, they are anti-MS. Yet others have an additional agenda, they are hoping that as the market share of firefox increases, websites will start to be tested with firefox.

As it is, many bank sites are still IE only.

Still there are downsides to a software product becoming too popular. The number one of concern of course is that people might start to target it for weaknesses. Firefox again is a poster child. The same applies for any security product that becomes or is too popular. NAV, ZA, heck even KAV is so popular in certain circles.

If I'm a cynic, I would say if you found some super great security software, don't advertise it too aggressively , since it might draw too much attention ))



Oh and I forgot kickbacks from the vendors of course as a benefit

 

Interesting point. My bank's site "officially" (per their system requirements page) supports only IE and Netscape, and I was unhappy that it meant one more place where I'd have to drop back to IE.

I phoned their tech support people and asked what progress was being made with OK-ing Firefox. The rep said "Go ahead and try it -- we've been told sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't." And so far, without exception, it's worked fine for me, plus (as usual) loads even their pages more smoothly than IE.

(Edit) The guy commented that the reason they prefer IE or NS is that those two make it easier for them to log and trace any cases of suspicious activity.

 

It is prideful human nature to want to think that yours is the "best": best sports-car, best baseball team, best city, best kids, etc. -- and that of course extends to sofware: best browser, best O.S., best AV, it is endless, and the source is the same: PRIDE. {Wasn't that once listed amonst the seven deadliest sins? ]

 

Let me guess they use a java applet?

What complete BS!

NS,IE is as loggable and traceable as firefox. Heck Netscape 8 IS firefox.

 

I recently participated in a trial with my Bank of their "new" version of Internet Banking and had great pleasure submitting comments about their lack of standards compliance with their html and they actually made an effort to fix it

In any case my bank's internet banking now works with firefox, they had already chosen menu components that were cross browser compatible and once they invested 5 mins to view the results of a html validation tool and the inevitable hours in the spec/change/test/release process things worked much more smoothly

It just goes to show that no matter how things are today, you just need to find the right way to communicate to these organisations to have a chance of getting it fixed tomorrow

 

Seriously if they need an external user to tell them to do html validation, they really need help !

 

If you have ever worked in a large organisation you will understand why

In this case the project had just had a setback, the release date had been delayed and the project sponsor was personally reviewing all the comments and feedback.

Seeing as the correct person was listening the problem was fixed very quickly without the usual techno-babble by web developers who know better but justify doing nothing by quoting browser use statistics....

 

Bingo. The Ego (Satan's favorite weapon), that thing that says, "What? How can I possibly be wrong about anything?" And there you have it, every single one of us saying that we are right 100% of the time and unwilling (or unable) to listen to other point of views, and that's why the world is in such a mess. Just think of it, how could every single one of us be right 100% of the time, yet who among us is willing to say, "OK, I might be wrong, I'll try another religion, political party, anti-virus, browser ..." Nope, because every single one of us just KNOWS for a fact that our religion, anti-virus, etc. is the one true one, and why, because our scripture or user's guide says so!

Acadia

 

I don't know about religions, but I have changed AVs,ATs,firewalls on average once every 3 months. The rate is similar for many here I bet

 

Now that is frequent...

Do you do that because the next must-have feature or bugfix has come along or just as a learning exercise ?

 

That is very often. I stuck with zone alarms for about 3 years before I switched to outpost and that was because outpost had rules instead of the broad spectrum that zone alarm has.

 

Hmmmm, Pollmaster, you change AV about as often as I change religion.

Acadia

 

Learning exercise of course. But it helps that I have a dozen comps to play with