Consumer Education at Mozilla
Last month my colleague Richard Milewski wrote and published a number of artifacts surrounding the creation and use of safe passwords*. It’s part of the Mozilla Consumer Education project, where we began researching and learning about what new topics are of most interest to ordinary web users, and furthermore what types/formats of information best resonate with this audience (who I hope with all due respect, wont mind me calling not-so-web-literates).
It was a super interesting quarter, where we saw the simple password video comic Richard produced (with characters from Simon “Gee” Giraudot) picked up across media, with over 4.5M Impressions on Facebook and 80,000+ unique video views. As a relatively small test for us, this was a clear indication there is a great need for more of this type of information from content providers and the general public alike. **
Perhaps it’s no surprise that in our research from more than 40,000 respondents: security, online identity theft and managing ones social media profile were some of the greatest web concerns. And so, as we drive quickly into 2011, we’ll be doing as much as possible to provide web smart information to not only our 400M+ Firefox users, but also beyond that to any web user.
Educating and helping web users isn’t new at Mozilla, as an International non-profit with the user at the centre of our mission, we’ve been looking out for the man on the street (or web!) from the very beginning. What’s new here then? A number of things:
(i) more people are spending vast amounts of their time online
(ii) the web is constantly changing, and is not slowing down
(iii) there just isn’t that much web education out there
Nothing new in any of those points, but when you put them altogether you get vast amounts of people who are using the web for everything from dating, grocery shopping to online banking — and who are not web-smart, and therefore not really in control.
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As mentioned this is something we want to change, and we’ll be providing much more web smart guides throughout 2011. And if you touch web users each day, I think we each have the obligation to help folks stay safe and in control of their online life, whilst having the best fun!
Let me know in the comments field of other web topics you hear people express concern or lack of knowledge about. Or if you’d like to help write any guides, we’d love to hear from you.
* Believe or not in Richard’s research there were plenty of very tech savvy folks who weren’t using great passwords — looks like we could all use a refresher!
** I was delighted to see Google also take consumer education forward last week with the launch of their beautifully made 20thingsilearned.com. There really is so much that we could and should all be doing. I have a good feeling that next year a whole lot more people are going to know more about the Web, and be more in control of their online life.
