Changes to the Featured & Recommended add-ons on AMO

One of the main goals for AMO is to help introduce add-ons to the user base of Firefox (and other other apps supported on AMO). The recommended list has been one of the ways to do that.

Prior to AMO v3.2, a single list of add-ons was maintained that showcased a sample of what can be done with add-ons. This came to be known as the “Recommended List”. Participation in the recommended list was coveted by authors since it was one of the more visited pages on the site and meant your add-on got downloaded more. AMO currently receives about 5 million pageviews per day with approximately 3% of the traffic to the recommended list. The list has grown and changed over time but has had about 25 add-ons on it. With a single list, the members of the recommended list got the most attention and “starved out” visibility for other add-ons.

One of the changes that was introduced with the latest AMO redesign is the ability to highlight a wider variety of add-ons. Instead of a single list, recommendations are now on a per-application, per-category and a per-locale basis. This gives the community greater flexibility and  increases the face time and exposure (impressions) that an add-on can have.

With AMO 3.2, we now have many lists.

• Category-Recommended lists are edited lists managed by the AMO editors. They represent a list of the most interesting add-ons for a particular category.
• Category-Recommended add-ons appear on:
  • One of the two slots in the AMO category landing page (see sample)
  • The Recommended List page for that category (see sample)
  • The default view in the “Get Add-Ons” panel in the Firefox 3 Add-Ons Manager (once this bug is fixed).
• We anticipate about 5-10 recommended add-ons per category. (Fuzzy math: 14 categories x 10 add-on/category = 140 recommended. Approximately 5000 add-ons on AMO means 3% are recommended.)
• As AMO editors are constantly reviewing add-ons, they can opt to showcase promising add-ons
• Add-on authors can request to become recommended (see last question)

• The Featured list is an edited list managed by the AMO administrators and editors that showcases add-ons for a period of time. This list will have add-ons rotate into and out of it on a periodic basis. Currently, once every 3-4 weeks. The list will be chosen from the existing set of Category-Recommended add-ons.
  • Members of the Featured list will be rotated into one of three slots on the front page of AMO
  • In order to ensure that the feature list maintains a wide sampling of add-ons from various categories, not all add-ons will be swapped out since some categories will need representation.
  • We anticipate about 20-30ish add-ons to be on the featured list at any one time
  • Currently, the following add-on categories will not be chosen for participation in the Featured list: Web Development, Language Tools & Toolbars. This may be revisited at a later date.

So, check out the new AMO site and the latest batch of Category-Recommended add-ons as well as the most recent rotation of Featured add-ons.

We’ve tried to outline a policy around how all this will be managed – if you’d like to read and review the gory details on how the featured and recommend lists work – check this out. Feedback is appreciated as we are trying to be as transparent as possible. There’s more to do in this area including clarifying some edge cases on policy, considering whether to recommend themes and building locale-specific Category-Recommended and Featured lists.