Re: promoting good gnome apps via news.gnome.org

[Claus Schwarm <clschwarm googlemail com>]

On Sat, 2009-06-13 at 11:01 -0700, Sriram Ramkrishna wrote:
> Actually, the original idea I had about this is to do away with our
> platform (eg the apps that make gnome.. after all the whole thing is a
> distro decision these days anyways)  Instead we would promote them via
> adsense and drive traffic to these apps thus using them as marketing
> tools.  That might make people work harder to get themselves into
> compliance in a particular niche.

I agree to the idea that we would not need an default "GNOME
applications" package. A list of suggested apps would be sufficient. 

But spending money on an Adsense campaign would be wasted.

Look at the Rhythmbox homepage, for an example: From a sales point of
view, the page is simply bad. It mentions no benefits. It triggers no
curiosity to find out more. There's no social proof. There's no
call-to-action. 

Even if there would be a call-to-action: What would it be about?
Download the tarball and compile yourself?

As long as application developers fail to understand how important a
decentralized installer is for marketing, promoting their apps or even
improving their homepages is basically just a waste of time.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but that's just the way it is.


Best regards,
Claus