Since you asked for avast! Free Mobile Security (for Android) and we gave it to you, we wanted to celebrate its launch with our Community. Thus, from December 22, 2011 to January 22, 2012 we offered a contest where you could win 10 Samsung Galaxy Nexus phones and 300 free avast! Internet Security licenses.

Our contest question was…

We asked you to predict how many users of avast! Free Mobile Security there will be by February 10, 2012, 12:00 CET.

Responses showed us…

Roughly 50,000 contest participants showed us that we should actually do it more often. So even if you weren’t lucky this time, make sure you won’t miss our next one!

Results are finally in…

As February 10 is here, we can finally tell you that, as of today, we have 2 168 960 users of avast! Free Mobile Security.

Winners to be announced…

In the next 10 days, we will announce the 10 winners of Samsung Galaxy Nexus phones. Our winner will find his or her name in this format on our Facebook banner: Martin F.. And we will contact the winner via email, to arrange prize delivery.

The next-closest 300 responses will receive (via email) free licenses of avast! Internet Security.

Keep watching…

If you participated in our contest and your prediction was close to our final number above, be sure to follow our Facebook page and check your email regularly!

The second week of January 2012 started with amazing growth in terms of numbers for AVAST Software. Numbers and stats might not sound that “hot” and maybe you are wondering why I would write a blog post about it, but these numbers are REALLY HUGE and it is YOU – our avast! Community – who greatly helped us to achieve such results. Look at this:

1. Over 500,000 – fans of the avast! antivirus official page on Facebook.

Read more…

Last year on December 1 we had 40,000 fans on Facebook. It’s been a year and we now have over 420,000 fans!! This is incredible word-of-mouth growth and we are very proud to have such a loyal and developing community.

To show appreciation for your support and to celebrate the launch of our new avast! Free Mobile Security (coming soon!), we decided to organize a contest for our Community.

This year’s giveaway will be organized differently than last year’s. Some of you remember our 2010 Winter Quiz and have asked for a similar promo, so we are preparing another Facebook contest. More details will be available with the launch of our Android security, but here are the prizes we will be offering:

1. Grand prize (10 winners): Android phone, free avast! Internet Security license, and a t-shirt
2. Second prize (300 winners): free avast! Internet Security license.

The contest will begin a day after the official launch of avast! Free Mobile Security. This will be announced on our avast! Facebook page. Please follow it next week and don’t miss your chance to win a prize!

Keep your fingers crossed

In early November, somewhere on planet earth, “Thomas” downloaded a copy of avast! Antivirus, completed his online registration, and has since been protected from an array of malware and infected websites.

That is just the start. Thomas – the name he registered under – is also the 180 millionth registered user of avast! Antivirus and has won an expenses-paid trip to Prague, capital of the Czech Republic.

We have sent Thomas several emails to let him know that he’s a winner. So far, there has been no response. “We really do want to find him and give him this prize,” says Vince Steckler, CEO of AVAST Software. “Not only are we the only security software with over 180 million registered users, we are also the only one rewarding our users. I enjoyed meeting Fabricia from Brazil and I would like to meet Thomas.” Read more…

Fabricia, our famous 160 millionth avast! user registration from Brazil, is coming to Prague with her husband! We at AVAST Software are all excited about their visit and looking forward to hosting them here – especially since it turns out that we are inadvertently sponsoring their honeymoon.

I decided to ask them a few questions before the trip, just to see what their expectations were.

1. Have you ever won any valuable prize before?

Fabricia: No, neither Eder (new husband) nor I have ever been awarded with any prize whatsoever.

2. How does it feel to be the 160,000,000^th avast user registration?

Receiving the email notification that we won a trip to Prague was initially a huge surprise.  At the beginning, I thought it was a scam message. However, after confirming that it wasn’t spam, we were very happy… even euphoric. Especially since, as I just mentioned, it was the first time I actually won something and that the value of this award is outstanding. On top of that, we were planning to get married, so we agreed that this trip would be slightly postponed so it could be our honeymoon. We are sooooooo happy and looking forward to it.

3. What do you expect from the trip?

Our expectations are the best possible, and we are anxious to meet AVAST people. We’ve also heard that Prague is incredibly beautiful and we will have an opportunity to visit many interesting places. Read more…

I bet most of you have seen the ‘80s Back to the Future trilogy.  Back then it had great special effects, hi-tech equipment, impressive cars and tricks, but there was also a great theme in which the main hero goes back to the past…

You might be wondering how does it relate to avast! antivirus? Well all of us have a bit of nostalgia for the past, a time when we didn’t use PCs and there were no viruses.

So, the other day I asked my colleagues in our marketing/PR department: do you remember your first PC or the first virus you caught?

I was surprised what kind of discussion it has opened and how excited everyone was about it. So here we go (in alphabetical order):

Jason – Copywriter

First pseudo-computer I owned was Atari 2600 (circa 1984-5).

First real computer I ever used (at school): Commodore 64 (circa 1986-7) with a cassette-tape drive.

First real computer I actually owned was an HP desktop I bought in 1997 (with Windows 95 and McAfee antivirus (avast! engine!!)). I had it until 2002, when I upgraded to a Gateway desktop with Windows XP, which I think came with Symantec/Norton(?)… which I did not renew, instead using free antivirus software (ZoneAlarm, AVG, avast!) from then on.

Milos – Marketing Director

I was a poor kid from a poor village.  No computers.  Just socialism.  Left and right… everywhere you looked. Firsthand experience was the computer lab at school when I lived for a while in Modesto, California, in 1992/1993.   PC,  Macs and – listen carefully – Amiga.

I hated Mac because the only way to get the floppy disk out was through the software-eject button.  So when it crashed – and it was crashing all the time – your disk was in there and impossible to get out.

The PC on the other hand was excellent.  Crashed equally as often as the Mac, but there was a miracle hardware button, and when you pushed it the disk was out!  Lovely.

And of course the Amiga… I learned how to animate and draw on it.  It was THE computer for graphics!

Read more…

I wrote an avast! blog post in August telling you about a project we’d been working on in our Marketing/PR department: a new avast! Community section of our website. I’m happy to report that it’s now live!  

So what’s new? We changed the design, made it more interactive, and added easier (right-side) navigation.

First, check the overview page, where a slide show at the top will lead you to the other Community pages. Below that, you will find a Facebook Comment box, so you can participate in real-time discussions with other Community members.

Also, we recommend our brand new interactive comparison to see the best antivirus (compare avast! Free Antivirus to other paid-for products!). Using complete results of independent tests, this comparison tool shows you key information about performance levels of different antivirus products. At the end of the day, you will determine that avast! is truly the best antivirus.   Check it out!

Last but not least, these are just initial improvements. We are looking forward to your participation on the new avast! Community website and we look forward to your feedback. We hope you will like it!

Fabricia, from Brazil, was a very lucky register user. She registered her avast! software and, as the 160,000,000th registration, won a trip to Prague.   On top of it, she is going to get married soon, so AVAST Software will be a happy sponsor of her honeymoon in Prague. Typical for a Brazilian, Fabricia is sociable and friendly. So after exchanging plenty of messages and calling her (with great help from our Brazilian-Portuguese-speaking AVAST colleague, Marcus), we became friends on Facebook. (Here I should say OBREGADA to a Google Translator . So when I saw Fabricias’ post, I couldn’t resist writing about it!  We just sent the tickets we booked for Fabricia and her fiancé last week, which immediately was reflected on Facebook with a photo album “A honeymoon in Prague is confirmed” – with pictures of beautiful Prague! We are very much looking forward to meeting Fabricia and Eder in November. More than just for security, avast! Free Antivirus gives you the chance to win valuable prizes. For more info check our winners section.

Summer in Prague is about to end, and for our Marketing/PR team at AVAST Software it was quite a busy one. Despite it being peak vacation season, we spent part of the summer redesigning our Community website. It was sometimes a complicated task, as our designer, Tereza, was working remotely from the USA. But now it’s nearly finished, and we hope you will enjoy it.

We decided that our current Community section needed some major improvements. We added easier right-side navigation, changed the layout, and made it more interactive. Some new sections will be added, so you will find more avast! info.

Here is a little sample for you.