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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: May 18, 2002 Slashdot egotrips over Flash webcam features (Flazoom) -- "Yesterday a post about the new Flash 6 plug-in webcam/microphone features showed us two things about the Slashdot community. First, they spread FUD faster than Microsoft when it comes to Flash. Second, these folks think that Macromedia needs their support for Flash to become a success (Not that having the most downloaded piece of software in the history of the Internet is a success story)."
Reader Comments...
Most downloaded? Yeah, right. If you want to believe the word of the company that is pushing its own product. Posted by: on May 18, 2002 10:29 AM
I do not believe Macromedia's statistics - that they have the penetration they claim, or that the majority of people with Flash have an up-to-date version installed. Average people shun installing anything when prompted to on a web page. Posted by: on May 19, 2002 10:25 AM
Macromedia's statistics and methodology for their plug-in numbers are available on their site: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/ After reviewing the penetration statistics on the site, I find no claim that the majority of people have the latest version (only 3 to 8% have the Flash 6 version according to Macromedia). I do however believe that the majority of users are able to view Flash 5 content. The format has been around for over 18 months, and the plug-in has been bundled with all the popular browsers. In addition many web sites are deploying some content in the SWF format, thus users are presented with many opportunities to download the plug-in. When you state that "Average people shun installing anything when prompted to on a web page," I think that you are forgetting that average users also want to get more out of their web experience. We are constantly bombarded with messages that the web is full of amazing multimedia technology (the Intel ads are a good example). Flash is currently the only stable, cross platform/browser method for delivering content to meet the expectations that users are fed by TV advertisments.
I don't know about the Intel ads in USA, but here in India, they range from wild exaggeration to total lies. Just because ads tout multimedia on the Web doesn't mean people actually want it. To me, there's nothing quite as annoying as sound suddenly playing on a site while you're at work. All at once, you disrupt several working people, who then look around to figure out what the sound was. Posted by: MadMan on May 20, 2002 04:16 PM
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