8.3 million downloads of Mozilla Firefox 3!!! WOW!

I blogged (HERE and HERE) about the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 (which I am currently running and loving).

I stumbled onto THIS little story today that stated that with less than 4 hours to go, they had already had 6. million downloads. But they crossed the 8.3 million download mark. Wow!!! That's a bunch of downloads.

Here are a few of their stats:
"At this writing, about four hours before the end of the 24-hour record period, more than 6.1 million copies have been downloaded. You can see the results, country by country, at Mozilla's World Record page.

The United States accounts for a plurality of the downloads, at more than 2.1 million.

According to the Mozilla Blog, downloads at one point were rolling at 9,000 per minute. More details:

• We exceeded the first day download mark for Firefox 2 of 1.6 million after just five hours of availability for Firefox 3.
• Net Applications is already reporting a 300% positive change in Firefox 3 market share worldwide just today.
• Over 500 articles about the launch were linked to from Google News
• The Firefox 3 launch made the front pages of BBC.co.uk, NYTimes.com, Liberation.fr, laRepubblica.it, Digg, Slashdot, Techcrunch, and Yahoo! News"
  

If you look at the download page, you can see that the U.S. ended up being 3.5 million of their downloads. Wow!



Now, you're probably thinking, "So what?" And to some extent you're right.
The first "So what?" is that I'm a nerd and I care and this is my blog.

But the second "So what?" is that you should never underestimate the power of marketing, getting your word out there and providing a product that people want. The youth ministry questions are...

• "Are the youth ministry programs hitting in such a way that the students want them?"
  
• "If they are, are we getting the word out so that people know beyond just newsletters (i.e. web, text, word of mouth and other ways that we haven't though of yet)?"
• "Are we doing what we can do to create an environment for the Holy Spirit to do His work in? Or are we just throwing it out there and hoping that it will take off?"
  

Just thinking out-loud.

Jim