↓
 
  • Home
  • About SSM
    • Guy Smith – Chief Strategist
    • Vision and Values at Silicon Strategies Marketing
    • Your size company
      • Start-ups – Setting a Good Foundation
      • Mid-sized Companies
      • Enterprises – Aligning Teams and Leading Marketing Initiatives
  • Services
    • Market Research
    • Marketing Strategy Development
    • Marketing Communication and Materials
    • Marketing Operations/Execution
    • Mentoring and Coaching
    • Seminars & Sessions
      • Marketing Strategy Seminars
      • Mentored, One-day Strategy Development for Startups
    • Interim Marketing Executives
  • Clients
    • Selected Silicon Strategies Clients
    • Client Case Studies
      • SuSE/Novell
      • DeviceAnywhere
      • Private Social Networks
      • VA Software
      • Foreign Exchange Translations
      • FundNET
      • Rubric
      • Telamon
  • Contact

  • Technology Marketing
    • Market Definition
    • Market Segmentation
    • Buyer Genotypes/Personae
    • Whole Product Definition
    • Positioning
    • Branding
    • Market Messages
  • White Papers

Post navigation

← iYear
Commoditized Consolidation →

Netscape Necrology

Posted on 2008/01/08 by admin2008/01/08

Alas, poor Netscape. I knew them heretofore.

It is indeed sad to see the reaper claim Netscape Navigator. And sadly enough, the very thing that brought them fame may well have killed them — namely buzz.

When the net was first being popularized, and HTML was still a quirky technology at best, we had limited choices for web surfing. People with graphical terminals (you lucky *#&**#^!) had Mosaic. Primitive as it was, it at least allowed for direct and intuitive access to the few thousand web pages in existence at that time. It was a durn site better than the text-based browsers (lynx) to which I was restricted.

Then along came Netscape. They picked-up where Mosaic left-off, adding polish and professionalism. Andreessen, Clark and the rest of the Netscape team knew the net better than most anyone at the time, and leveraged that knowledge in one of the earliest instances of Internet buzz marketing.

And it worked … very, very well. Word of Netscape Navigator spread like a Santa Anna wildfire, and soon everyone had downloaded a copy. In short order, buzz had driven Navigator into total market dominance. The only thing that could disrupt this market leadership was to change the default browsing experience, which is what Microsoft did when it began bundling Internet Explorer on every new desktop machine sold on the planet.

Buzz marketing is good, but it is not good enough by itself to displace that degree of forced adoption. Buzz is good enough to claim market, and in this case to end the long life of Netscape Navigator.

Buzz trends for Firefox and NetscapeFirefox achieved it’s current market penetration (10% by common estimates, 17% by traffic on this web site) through buzz. By providing something different (a browser that worked the same across three major desktop platforms) and proving itself safer that Microsoft’s browser, they generated self-sustaining buzz. When my non-techie family members started to ask me about Firefox, then I knew its buzz had achieved break-through status.

The chart above shows the Google search trends for the words “firefox” and “netscape” (Firefox is the blue line — click on the graphic for a larger version). Firefox wasn’t even released until late 2004, and yet had substantial buzz early in the year. Netscape buzz continued its steady downward trend by offering nothing newsworthy.

If anything, Firefox buzz accelerated the demise of Navigator. I won’t opine on if this is a good or bad turn of events, but it illustrates the two edges of the buzz sword. Not only can buzz be used to increase awareness of and demand for a product, it can diminish the demand for competing products. In this buzz is somewhat unique, in effect sucking all available oxygen out of a market and suffocating competitors.

Yet another reason buzz management needs to be part of every marketer’s armory.

Posted in Buzz Management, Marketing permalink

Post navigation

← iYear
Commoditized Consolidation →

Sidebar Area

  • Add Some Widgets!
    This theme has been designed to be used with sidebars. This message will no longer be displayed after you add at least one widget to one of the Sidebar Widget Areas using the Appearance → Widgets control panel.
    You can also change the sidebar layout for this page using theme options.
    Note: If you have added widgets, be sure you've not hidden all sidebars on the Per Page options. You could switch this page to One Column.
  • Log in
Copyright © 2001-2025 Silicon Strategies Marketing — Marketing Consulting | Silicon Valley, Asheville NC
The infamous Facebook Non-Support Saga
↑