I ran across an interesting article about popularity of Linux distributions at:
http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-...
Of course you can debate the method and the accuracy of the data, but I think it gives some interesting insights.
One thing that I found interesting is that openSUSE seems to have a strong bias towards enthusiastic users, but not towards developers.
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Hey,
On 08.04.2015 14:32, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-...
Of course you can debate the method and the accuracy of the data, but I think it gives some interesting insights.
I find his methodology more than, how to put this gentle, "questionable"? :-)
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Our current strategy and marketing already tries to "cater to users who are interested in computers and want to get work done, experiment or learn."[1] So does nearly all of our messaging IMHO.
"Computer enthusiast" is our target market. People who aren't computer enthusiasts simply don't use our products. Agreed?
I think we need to further segment the 'computer enthusiast' market and find smaller segments to address more aggressively...
Henne
[1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Strategy
Hi all!
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Our current strategy and marketing already tries to "cater to users who are interested in computers and want to get work done, experiment or learn."[1] So does nearly all of our messaging IMHO.
"Computer enthusiast" is our target market. People who aren't computer enthusiasts simply don't use our products. Agreed?
I think we need to further segment the 'computer enthusiast' market and find smaller segments to address more aggressively...
I fully agree that we might want to start targeting specific focus groups more intensively. From our experiences in organising the conference, it's very clear that the "average openSUSE user" doesnt exist. Or at least doesnt want to be addressed like that (else they would respond better to the conf).
Perhaps we can even use this approach to still raise more awareness for the conference.
Henne, what would be your suggestion for the segmentation? ]
I could think of a couple of groups: - computer enthousiasts and power users - small business users - developers (web, app, application) - sysadmins (server, network, etc)
How would we move ahead and approach these more targeted?
Best regards, HdR
On Wednesday 08 April 2015 17:06:21 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
On 08.04.2015 14:32, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Our current strategy and marketing already tries to "cater to users who are interested in computers and want to get work done, experiment or learn."[1] So does nearly all of our messaging IMHO.
"Computer enthusiast" is our target market. People who aren't computer enthusiasts simply don't use our products. Agreed?
Agreed. The one thing, where I would see a need for clarification is targeting developers. That's something which comes up quite a bit (although it doesn't in the strategy document). But I don't think we reach these people. So building on our strengths it might be good to not try to do this, but focus on the power users, admins, etc. which would fall under the "enthusiast" category.
I think we need to further segment the 'computer enthusiast' market and find smaller segments to address more aggressively...
This is a good idea.
I could think of a couple of groups:
- computer enthousiasts and power users
- small business users
- developers (web, app, application)
- sysadmins (server, network, etc)
How would we move ahead and approach these more targeted?
I think this is a good topic for oSC and I'm pretty sure the board will address it there.
Thanks for the info. The data is a little old and I agree with Henne that the data and methodology used is questionable.
From a quick analysis on distrowatch, one could conclude openSUSE is steadily rising given its 12 months, 6 months and 3 months moving average. It's a solid 4th on that site, which would contradict Donnie Berkholz's story of the data. All trends show an up tick in popularity, but this is based off distrowatch's "light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions." Having a demographic info would really aid in nailing down our audience. Are there any measurement applications we use on our website to assess our web traffic?
On Thursday, April 09, 2015 08:44:15 AM Douglas DeMaio wrote:
Are there any measurement applications we use on our website to assess our web traffic?
All that we have is the analysis that I did for oSC13 and the PIWIK application that we used for the release.
IMHO we can extend the first analysis to try to figure out more about our current user base.
But this is a complex topic. We have a hidden user base made of old users, mostly professionals (teachers, lawyers, medical doctors, etc) that usually do not show in the IT statistics like the one referenced in this thread.
IMHO Tumbleweed can change that. This can be a real distribution for developers, that can compete with Arch (same blending edge software, more QA and with much less maintenance burden), but we are failing how to transmit this message.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hey,
On 08.04.2015 18:13, Hans de Raad wrote:
"Computer enthusiast" is our target market. People who aren't computer enthusiasts simply don't use our products. Agreed?
Henne, what would be your suggestion for the segmentation?
I have none as I haven't invested time into this. In general it's always a good idea to come up with a marketing plan that targets segments which
* we can identify (demographics, behavior, lifestyle, interests etc.) * we can measure (size, evolution, responsiveness) * we can easily reach (which media do they consume, which conferences do they visit etc.) * should not change too quickly
How would we move ahead and approach these more targeted?
You would think about what you can do for the segment and what they can do for you. Then, in our "field", you go ahead and try to create win-win situations.
Henne
- -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson
Hey,
On 09.04.2015 08:44, Douglas DeMaio wrote:
Are there any measurement applications we use on our website to assess our
web traffic?
Yes we use Piwik[1] on http://beans.opensuse.org
Henne
Hey,
On 08.04.2015 19:56, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Wednesday 08 April 2015 17:06:21 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
On 08.04.2015 14:32, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
"Computer enthusiast" is our target market. People who aren't computer enthusiasts simply don't use our products. Agreed?
Agreed. The one thing, where I would see a need for clarification is targeting developers. That's something which comes up quite a bit (although it doesn't in the strategy document). But I don't think we reach these people.
I think we do next to nothing for developers in our 'marketing'. That might be the reason we don't reach them ;-)
Anyway segmenting our target market is something that requires thought, research, comparison and in the end benchmarking. This isn't something you should do in between a couple of mails.
We should try to get a couple of people together at oSC15 and see if we can make this fly. Who would be interested in creating a marketing plan?
Henne
Fwiw, I've plugged the openSUSE Conference at about 6 technical/dev meetup groups in NL, let's see if that channel works?
All the best! Hans
On 9 April 2015 at 08:44, Douglas DeMaio Douglas.DeMaio@suse.de wrote:
I could think of a couple of groups:
- computer enthousiasts and power users
- small business users
- developers (web, app, application)
- sysadmins (server, network, etc)
How would we move ahead and approach these more targeted?
I think this is a good topic for oSC and I'm pretty sure the board will address it there.
Thanks for the info. The data is a little old and I agree with Henne that the data and methodology used is questionable.
From a quick analysis on distrowatch, one could conclude openSUSE is steadily rising given its 12 months, 6 months and 3 months moving average. It's a solid 4th on that site, which would contradict Donnie Berkholz's story of the data. All trends show an up tick in popularity, but this is based off distrowatch's "light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions." Having a demographic info would really aid in nailing down our audience. Are there any measurement applications we use on our website to assess our web traffic?
Hi,
This is a really timely discussion ;) . We had a longer conversation about this topic at the openSUSE Board meeting recently and completed a short mapping exercise where we on one hand listed the things we thought were the strong points of our project, OBS, KIWI, Tumbleweed, openQA were on that list, plus other things, and at he other end of the whiteboard we were working on we listed potential target audiences. These included developers, sysadmins, end users, ISVs and a few others. When we mapped our strength to the potential target audiences, developers and sysadmins had the most connections.
The point of this was not to change the project, what we do, or how we do it, but rather to find some focus for a potential marketing/out-reach effort.
After the mapping we did a bit of brain storming for a tag line of a potential marketing campaign.
openSUSE The makers choice for {Developers | Sysadmins}
Obviously any effort in this direction and pushing a focused marketing effort needs people and we are happy to see that multiple groups are having discussions about this at this time. We'd love to see this continue in a focused direction, which does not necessarily have to be what the six of us came up with over a weekend. Whatever we can do from a board perspective to help this we'd be happy to do.
Regards,
Richard
On Wednesday 08 April 2015 14.32:25 Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
I ran across an interesting article about popularity of Linux distributions at:
http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-...
Of course you can debate the method and the accuracy of the data, but I think it gives some interesting insights.
One thing that I found interesting is that openSUSE seems to have a strong bias towards enthusiastic users, but not towards developers.
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Thanks to raise it.
More recent data show us in a better place and select openSUSE as best desktop distribution. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/810295-the-top-11-best-linu...
On Sunday 12 April 2015 10.52:56 Bruno Friedmann wrote:
On Wednesday 08 April 2015 14.32:25 Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
I ran across an interesting article about popularity of Linux distributions at:
http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-...
Of course you can debate the method and the accuracy of the data, but I think it gives some interesting insights.
One thing that I found interesting is that openSUSE seems to have a strong bias towards enthusiastic users, but not towards developers.
Linux enthusiasts is a target audience where we can shine with our mix of making things simple (e.g. YaST) and providing powerful tools (e.g. OBS). It might be worth to consider that in our marketing and strategy more.
Thanks to raise it.
More recent data show us in a better place and select openSUSE as best desktop distribution. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/810295-the-top-11-best-linu...
And also this perspective is worth to read
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/25/are_linux_distros_boring/
Le 12/04/2015 10:52, Bruno Friedmann a écrit :
More recent data show us in a better place and select openSUSE as best desktop distribution. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/810295-the-top-11-best-linu...
well... this article is of the kind "do not whurt anybody" and the author don't seems to have really tested every distro he recommend.
not to say openSUSE is bad :-), but it's almost as good as distribution server, and managing only one distro to do all is invaluable.
I already said I found a flyer from SUSE, that claim to be first (in number) in mainframe, SAP, China, aerospace, automotive, etc, all as servers. So I guess openSUSE ma y be good also.
jdd
Gesendet: Sonntag, 12. April 2015 um 13:56 Uhr Von: "Bruno Friedmann" bruno@ioda-net.ch An: opensuse-marketing@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-marketing] Popularity of Linux distributions
On Sunday 12 April 2015 10.52:56 Bruno Friedmann wrote:
On Wednesday 08 April 2015 14.32:25 Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
I ran across an interesting article about popularity of Linux distributions at:
http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-...
More recent data show us in a better place and select openSUSE as best desktop distribution. https://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/810295-the-top-11-best-linu...
And also this perspective is worth to read
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/25/are_linux_distros_boring/
It has got a reason, that we have got such a difference between both articles/ rankings. 2014 has been a year, where we have got many new users (and customers). Many people have used Windows xp and didn't want to change to 7 or 8. And the end of support was April 2014. I was asked by many friends what to use. It wasn't difficult... openSUSE! Most of them have changed and are happy. The rest has changed to Windows 8 and I can hear a lot of stories about update problems and rollbacks by Microsoft. That's our chance! I can see a good future.
The other distributions have got the same problem with contributors. I am on a mailinglist for general German Linux women and Debian has created a program for getting new people to the community: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/MoM
Best regards, Sarah
-
Alberto Planas -
Bruno Friedmann -
Cornelius Schumacher -
Douglas DeMaio -
Hans de Raad -
Henne Vogelsang -
jdd -
Richard Brown -
Sarah Julia Kriesch