Anticipate Google's third-party advertisers

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I'm just suggesting it be added to a "beat list."

Why is this important? It's important for marketing reasons. Allow me to explain.

First, Ghostery isn't that well-known. How do people even find out about it? If they start with Firefox's Add-ons recommendations, they're going to see Adblock Plus, and say, "OK, that's taken care of." With thousands of Add-ons available (literally hundreds in the Privacy & Security category), the selection is simply overwhelming, and a lot of people won't even bother to dig deeper.

But let's suppose they do venture into Privacy & Security. Then they'll be introduced to BetterPrivacy and NoScript. Where are you? You aren't on the Top Downloads list. And you aren't even on the Top Rated list. Everything there has five stars. You have four: you don't rate. So you need to get your numbers up, just to be noticed. You can do this.

Nothing works better to "sell" something than word-of-mouth advertising. So your presumptive audience at this point is people who are likely to influence others. Unfortunately, you're mostly going to hear back from the ADD crowd (you know, the people who don't care that YouTube recently raised the time limit on user-submitted videos from ten minutes to fifteen, because they can't sit still for ten minutes anyway). These are the ones asking how to uninstall Ghostery. Why are they asking? Because you didn't make a good first impression — and, with them, you only get one chance. And that leads me to who your audience really is: not the millions of people you'd like to see using your product, but a few dozen fickle magazine (and newspaper) columnists, plus a handful of wannabes. (Sorry, I meant "respected bloggers.")

Your mission at this point isn't to "get everything right." You have just so many warm bodies, and only so many hours in a day. So you have to prioritize. That's not a bad thing. Your reviewers aren't going to give your software a rigorous shakedown, because they're stretched thin, too. They're looking for one thing: "Does this work for me?" Since the biggest complaints seem to revolve around what is or isn't being blocked, you'd be well advised to pay attention to probabilities and market share. And in this case, I'm referring to the advertising, tracking, and analytics companies.

If someone were to ask me, "if I could only do one thing to improve my web browsing experience, what should that be?" I'd most likely say, "block DoubleClick." A relatively small number of companies account for a large part of the problem. While it may be interesting to know how many sites a particular bug appears on, that's the wrong metric to be worrying about. You should be concerned with the number of pages served, and whether they're being served on sites your audience is visiting. I live in a country where more people vote for who should win American Idol than who should be elected President. I want to know what www.fox.com is doing. Consumer spending accounts for what, 70% of our economy? One out of every five retail dollars spent goes to Walmart. So, I want to know that www.walmart.com is doing. etc.

Google is everywhere. Microsoft is everywhere, too — they're just more subtle about it. When they tell you who they're partnered with, pay attention. This will help maximize the chances that The Person Who Matters Most will bless your product, because it works for them. But be careful not to "break" their Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or Hotmail, or they'll drop you like a hot rock. (And yes, those are moving targets.)

Now, lest you get the impression I'm advocating putting The Marketing Department in charge, I intend nothing of the sort. Good products need good engineers. Marketing-driven products usually end up becoming poor products. If Marketing calls the shots, you end up with another Palm Pre: underappreciated, and destined for oblivion. However, if you only have engineers working on a consumer product, it often ends up difficult to use, not to mention unattractive, if not downright ugly. So there's a place for people in both camps. Either way, the same principle applies: try to put yourself in your customers' shoes. Do I like this? Would I recommend this? It isn't always easy. But try, nonetheless.