The first week of collections blew away our goals for the launch, so I’d like to share some statistics from the last week. Add-on users have created more than 11,000 collections, comprising 140,000 instances of 3500 different add-ons. Of those collections, 6200 are listed publicly in the Collection Directory, while the others are private. We’ve served over 245,000 add-on downloads from collection view pages, not including downloads served from other pages accessed through collections.

The Add-on Collector has been very successful as well, with 46,000 downloads and about 19,000 Collectors in use. Users of the extension have created 2500 auto-publisher collections, which are collections automatically kept in sync with the add-ons that user has installed in Firefox. And hundreds of add-ons have been shared with friends through the Collector’s email sharing feature.

But the most rewarding measure of success so far has been hearing people say collections have helped them discover new add-ons, which was the primary goal of the project.

Because the response to collections has been so great, we’re going to keep adding new collections-related features and improvements over the next few months. We have a number of ideas for what features to implement, but need help from the community to identify which cool new collection features are most wanted. So, if you’re interested in the future of collections, head over to the newsgroup and let us know which of the proposed features you want to see.

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In November, we launched Fashion Your Firefox, which was a collection of add-ons that we felt were great for a novice user just getting started with customizing their browser. Now, we’d like to take it a step further and let anyone create their own collection of add-ons that can be shared with their friends, posted on blogs, and featured on the Firefox Add-ons website.

Just as a DJ selects which songs to play and comment on, we want to let anyone create a list of add-ons on any topic — whether it’s “Justin’s Must-have Firefox Extensions”, “David’s Favorite Travel Add-ons”, or “Nicole’s St. Patrick’s Day Themes”. These user-created collections would appear in a directory alongside collections created by Mozilla. We’re interested in what sorts of collections people would create, and what collections you’d like to see in the directory. Please share your ideas with us in the comments.

We’re very excited about this idea and hope that it will improve add-on discovery, increase user involvement with add-ons, improve the stickiness of the add-ons website, and make add-ons more social. If you’re interested in learning more about the project, you can visit our project wiki.

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For those of you who like to read ahead, here are the slides:

You’ll also be able to ask questions in #airmozilla on irc.mozilla.org, or via the air.mozilla.com website.

Hope to see you there!

Nick

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The “Fashion Your Firefox” web application was developed to help the less tech-savvy user wade through the thousands of Firefox add-ons available. These add-ons, many of which are on the AMO Recommended List, were chosen explicitly for their consumer-centric uniqueness and appeal to a broader audience. FYF allows a user to focus on a small group of really useful add-ons and easily install these add-ons via an intuitive point-and-click interface.

David Rolnitzky, lead for the Fashion Your Firefox project, had this to say:

One of the great things about the Fashion Your Firefox collection is that it allows users to bundle a bunch of different add-ons together all at once. In essence, it’s like having a shopping cart that you can use to select any add-on from the Fashion Your Fox collection, “check-out” with just one click, and after a quick Firefox restart, have a whole new browser that’s made just for you.

The add-ons for this first collection were chosen based on a number of criteria:

• Consumer friendly
• Represent a variety of categories and functionality
• Good user experience
• Good traction with users
• Firefox 3 and Mac/PC compatible

The launch of “Fashion Your Firefox” offers some interesting opportunities to Mozilla, its users and its development partners.

Benefits for Mozilla:

• We now have an easier method to distribute add-ons in a format that is intuitive, especially to mainstream users
• FYF gives users an additional method of discovering add-ons
• It opens up yet another method of giving add-on developers an opportunity to spotlight their work

Benefits to the community/add-on authors:

• FYF is another opportunity for distribution in addition to lists/categorization on AMO
• FYF will offer broad exposure to a different set of users

The really interesting part of the “Fashion Your Firefox” web application is the opportunity it presents to provide “theme-based” collections of add-ons to users. Add-ons can now be grouped into specific topics such as sports, news, photography and music giving Mozilla users a very rich and precise experience when searching for “just the right add-on”. This a HUGE distinction for Firefox in terms of the way that browsers have typically handled add-on management and a clear step forward in helping introduce users to the power of add-ons without completely overwhelming them. By enhancing the delivery model, we’re now providing users with the ability to quickly choose from “best of breed” add-ons that match their specific tastes, all of which falls perfectly in line with Mozilla’s focus of empowering the community.

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