What do you think of Firefox Referrals?

[Dasha08]

Hello everyone!

We’re exploring a new idea called Firefox Referrals: a way to share Firefox with friends and family through personal invite links. We’d love your early feedback on the idea and what would make it feel useful and motivating.

1. What’s your reaction to Firefox Referrals?
   (Would you use something like this?)
   
   
2. What would motivate you to share Firefox with others?
   (For example, helping friends and family, rewards or perks, community recognition, tracking your impact, or something else.)

Your feedback would be really helpful. Thank you all.

[DenJohn]

What's the use case for the referral link being unique/personalized?

Is it for tracking?

[Dasha08]

Great question. For the person sharing Firefox, a unique link could make the experience more personal and more rewarding over time. For example, we could explore personalized invite experiences later on, or even incentives tied to referrals. So even if the first version is simple, the personal link creates room for that to grow.

From Mozilla’s side, the link also helps us understand when Firefox is shared and installed through this experience. We’d collect limited data for that purpose, not for advertising.

What are your thoughts on this? 

[KZ]

No, not a good idea, for a few reasons.

I don't know what state my cousin/neighbour/hairdresser's system is in, but a referral adds my name to their difficulties.

• What idiot plugins have they installed that interpose themselves at installation?
• What new Edge scare message will MS pop up in their Freedonia-specific spin of Windows?
• What software restriction policy do they have at work? They sure don't remember, but Dasha said it's good, but it didn't work, Dasha, any idea why?

Anything more involved than "Hey, here's a thing you might look up" (which I can manage on my own) suggests I have some insight into what their onboarding experience will be like. I don't.

I thought gamification was kinda passé by now. I want to _avoid_ persistent state that risks scope creep. Are we gonna prediction-market what theme they choose or what homepage icon they click on first?

Mozilla has put palpable effort in the past into making Firefox' public face inviting, that's the best way to attract engagement. Clear messaging, single simple purpose, and a non-huckstering community. That's an enormous ask in this age. That's what does, or what would, or what did, motivate me to advocate for Firefox.

[Dasha08]

Thank you for sharing! These are some really interesting points for us to think about!

[breakingspell]

Anyone can "refer" someone to Firefox by sharing the main webpage of https://www.firefox.com/. The current page at the time of posting looks fantastic. It adequately explains features and is updated for the browser's modern design. 

There's no need to make sharing your web browser any more personal than just telling your friends and family "I use Firefox for X reasons and features, here's the download page". A hashed invite link would raise a red flag if someone were to send it to me instead of the public-facing website, I simply would not click on it. 

Anecdotally, several of my coworkers switched to Firefox after observing Multi-Account Containers in use during screen shares. Seeing a functionally useful feature in action is what convinced my coworkers to try Firefox, not a system to track their clicks.

> rewards or perks

I can foresee outrage if users gain some advantage/disadvantage by means of this system. What's stopping someone from jacking up their invite count with bots to get a little cosmetic badge? A web browser isn't a social platform, nor is it a freemium cloud or antivirus service where invite links like this are common. 

To be frank, this is a waste of time and resources, please consider shelving this and prioritizing long-standing functional issues with the browser itself. 

[s_hentzschel]

It's a great idea. This type of gamification — when it goes beyond simple sharing and perhaps includes a leaderboard or rewards of some kind — can help encourage people to share Firefox more. And ultimately, all Firefox users benefit from increased use of Firefox.