{"id":2392,"date":"2010-02-19T16:22:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T23:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/?p=2392"},"modified":"2019-09-18T12:05:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T19:05:37","slug":"why-do-firefox-downloads-spike-on-release-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2010\/02\/19\/why-do-firefox-downloads-spike-on-release-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Firefox Downloads Spike on Release Days?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As Daniel <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/data\/2010\/02\/18\/firefoxdownloadsonreleaseday\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pointed out<\/a>, there has always been a dramatic increase in fresh downloads\/installs of Firefox at the time of each minor version release \u2013 separate from people simply being updated.\u00a0 We\u2019ve never entirely understood this user behavior until Daniel started some digging yesterday.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what we know\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yesterday (just after 3.0.18 and 3.5.8 were released) we saw a spike in fresh downloads\/installs of Firefox.\u00a0 The typical daily number is in the ballpark of 2 Million and yesterday it shot up to over 4 Million.<\/li>\n<li>As Daniel <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/data\/2010\/02\/18\/firefoxdownloadsonreleaseday\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">highlighted<\/a>, nearly all of the download activity was for Firefox 3.6.<\/li>\n<li>Digging a little deeper, we also discovered that the entire spike in 3.6 downloads was coming from people on Firefox 3.5.8.\u00a0 This means people successfully got the update yesterday (3.5.8), and then went out of their way to manually do one further update (i.e., get 3.6).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why or how is this happening?<\/p>\n<p>It turns out that the answer was right under our nose.\u00a0\u00a0 When people get an update, they see an <a href=\"http:\/\/en-us.www.mozilla.com\/en-US\/firefox\/3.6\/whatsnew\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">update page<\/a>.\u00a0 And if they\u2019re not on the current major version (e.g., 3.6), the <a href=\"http:\/\/en-us.www.mozilla.com\/en-US\/firefox\/3.5.8\/whatsnew\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">page suggests<\/a> that they go and download the lastest and greatest.\u00a0\u00a0 So, what happened within this user interaction yesterday?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2393\" title=\"blog_post_358_36_downloads\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2010\/02\/blog_post_358_36_downloads.png\" alt=\"blog_post_358_36_downloads\" width=\"515\" height=\"725\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2010\/02\/blog_post_358_36_downloads.png 515w, https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2010\/02\/blog_post_358_36_downloads-213x300.png 213w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 515px) 100vw, 515px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So, this explains a common experience for millions of users each time a Firefox update is shipped.\u00a0 And it\u2019s good to see the messaging on that 3.5.8 update page (and all older update pages) is paying off.\u00a0 Perhaps we should consider changing the concept of those pages to be even more aggressive in getting people to update to the latest and greatest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Daniel pointed out, there has always been a dramatic increase in fresh downloads\/installs of Firefox at the time of each minor version release \u2013 separate from people simply being updated.\u00a0 We\u2019ve never entirely understood this user behavior until Daniel &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2010\/02\/19\/why-do-firefox-downloads-spike-on-release-days\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}