Last.fm does for music what Dutch startup Wakoopa wants to do for your desktop applications. Like Last.fm, Wakoopa uses a downloaded tracker, except it follows how often you use applications instead of listen to music. Similarly, Wakoopa has also built a Rails-powered social website around the data, letting users share their preferences with friends, write reviews of their favorite application, and download new ones. Wakoopa is backed by a fund of the three biggest media companies in the Netherlands (Ilse, IDG, Telegraaf) and launches May 2nd.
Wakoopa’s tracker logs what applications you use and for how long, updating your personal profile every 15 minutes. On the website, the aggregate data lists the most recently used applications and most used applications of all time. Each application has a profile that lists the people and groups who use it, reviews, and tags. For free applications, it also includes a download link for various versions, potentially creating a more social SourceForge. For the private beta, Firefox is the top used application, used by 23 people logging over 117 hours. MSN messenger is an odd second place, logging a total of 14 hours.
Since raving about desktop applications doesn’t have the same mass market appeal of music, I can’t see it breaking out of the developer community unless the tracker is bundled with some really attractive freebies.
truely useless
hmm, this story was under embargo until Tuesday. Service isn’t going live until then. Something went wrong somewhere?
@Boris, that’s the ethics in weblogs! You just can’t trust webloggers with embargo’s, ever. They’ll just post it anyhow way before and then say ‘oh, something went wrong, i clicked the wrong button in the cms’.
Red Hat’s Mugshot application tracking does this for the Linux crowd, where it’s a bit more useful…
@John Death: no in fact I think WE haven’t been very clear about the embargo in our message to them.
And when did you get so cynical?
Nick, thanks for your writeup. Unfortunately, we’re not live just yet! People can leave their e-mail address to be kept in the loop until the launch, which will be next week. The first 1000 people to leave their e-mail address will be given an exclusive, pre-launch login, as an appreciation for their interest.
I became so cynic after my death
By the way, MSN Messenger is by far the most popular IM client in The Netherlands where Wakoopa is from, that explains it being at number 2.
interesting concept…cool team – looking forward to start using it.
Completely worthless service. Kind of like Khosla-ventures-funded Y-Bomb Xobni. Analytics for things that don’t matter. Thanks makers of Wakoopa. Thanks for wasting your life and ours.
Nick – has TechCrunch decided to focus on things that add no value to the world? When there isn’t something to write about, don’t write about total crap.
MSN is by far the most popular instant messaging system in the whole Europe, which explains its 2nd place.
Next big Web 2.0 idea: Last.fm for keyboard buttons. Anyone wanna fund it?
Is it me or techcrunch is becoming a shit blog? where are the nice startups mike? all you talk about is your shit, sponsors, apple, digg and use the blog for flaming other companies.
why dont you call it shitcrunch eh? mashable.com is getting much better than this. start showing us some nice new startups instead of the same crap.
Dr. G – gotta love the pay-for-’rails-powered’ without a disclaimer “this phrase sponsored by 37signals”..
@Dr. G
There just aren’t enough good startups.
if people do not like or enjoy techcrunch i think they should just hang out somewhere else…don’t you all think?
It’s ok to criticize or comment, but it’s childish to just post offensive comments. If mashable.com is gettin better, good for them, go there.
But for those of us who like Techcrunch, please do not come here to write useless comments.
Thanks.
Too bad that people are using this post to complain about Techcrunch, let’s keep it on-topic and constructive. I’m really interested in the opinion of Techcrunch’ readers about Wakoopa!
exactly Wouter!
to get a beta invitation?
I have already signed up for beta testing but i guess i’m not in the first 1000 people: is there a special way
hehe..at least i tried!
The reason that last.fm and iLike and similar sites are interesting is that music says a lot about you, and what you’re listening to now is interesting by extension. What your friends are listening to is interesting, too. A song or picture can act as a jumping off point for other interesting user generated content. MOG has a bit of this going on, and this is what Flickr is all about. The experience provides a common reference point for social interaction.
Here’s the thing: Word & Excel say nothing about me, and chances are that the document I’m crunching on is not available to the community. The only thing usage does say about me is how much web-browsing or mah-jong I’m playing during work hours
Fine example of the next Dot-com bubble 2.0. Why would Ilse, IDG and the Telegraaf put money into this kind of projects? The targeted audience is limited to geeks and the company would have to shake some serious trees for this to take off.
The only financial model I see, is tracking people’s software usage and selling that information to software companies / marketeers. Sort of Nielsen ratings for applications. BUT! For that to work, Wakoopa needs to go mainstream; there are just not enough benefits for the average user in using Wakoopa.
Ah, I found out why lse, IDG and the Telegraaf are investing:
Boris? http://bomega.com/
Interesting concept, but I am not sure how useful it will be. I’m a geek, and I really do not care that much about the most popular software. The execution of their idea looks good and I hope they are successful.
And to all you who hate TechCrunch, I don’t know why you stick around. Just find some other blog that reports more on what you find useful. I personally like TechCrunch. While they do post stories that I sometimes could care less about, it’s their site and their prerogative- and you can’t always please everyone.
@neil I do (partly) agree with you, software isn’t that sexy as music or movies or even books, but you might be surprised by how addictive this is… I’m using this service for a couple of days (as I advised the guys on some topics) and on the office we have already competitions on who is most productive, or spends the most time on development and mail.
I even discovered some spy-ware on my computer (that is what I call a nice side benefit).
Also if you look at the big picture, this aggregated data, telling what people are actually using is a lot more interesting then the number of downloads of an application or even the “software diggs”. This is what makes it an interesting service I guess. I agree that this doesn’t count for word or excel, but this service might be a lot more sexy than Versiontracker, Download and SourgeFource combined.
The haters bring down this blog. I wish there were a comment rating system.
Don’t know why you’re suprised about MSN messenger. It is incredibly popular, especially in oceana (from what I have observed).
This is a good business idea but I can’t think of what would posess people to download the program, sign up & run the program all the time. Lastfm makes sense because people get fanatical about music plus it’s a great social introduction tool. What’s the point of sharing your running apps? And would you really want everyone seeing you’ve been playing Leisure Suit Larry for 67 hours? :p
Woohoo! I love this idea.
The company name sounds like a Super Mario Bros. villain. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Whenever I can chose, I prefer using Web-based software to installed crapware. All those Web apps would show up as Firefox on Wakoopa…
Although I’m delighted to see some new stuff coming from The Netherlands, I must agree with Neil. Wakoopa deals with two *major* problems in my view:
(1) Who cares about desktop applications? Wakoopa’s website answers this question with “what you use on your desktop is who you are”. Well… that must be the worst business model validation I’ve ever read. I’m betting my mother that 99.99% of the online population disagrees on this.
(2) A business should have (at least) some (future) revenue streams. I cannot think of a single one for Wakoopa.
Don’t get me wrong. It looks like Robert and Wouter did a very good job on the execution part of the job. If they just would have had a slightly better idea…
Let’s hope for Wakoopa that the future proves me wrong.
As a fellow nominee in the beta/stealth category of the next web awards, I think we have you beat.
Still, in all seriousness, I think if you can iterate to show use of web apps and desktop apps, your product will be more valuable.
I think the people who criticize the founders don’t realize this is just your launch and your product will change over time. Your business model shouldn’t be a concern to everyone else as long as you can put food on your table. I am not sure why some people get so bent out of shape because a business model is either a)not apparent: or b) seemingly based on advertising.
@Josh:
“Your business model shouldn’t be a concern to everyone else”
Isn’t this is weblog on start-ups? Doesn’t that mean that business models are being discussed?
Sure, discuss away.
Still, I would be careful about drawing conclusions based on little information.
Also, there is no need to be offended by a lack of a business model. I am sure they will figure out a way to put a roof over their heads.
I have to agree, this is a sorry excuse for a startup.
Have you seen Slife.com? It was previously called OnLife and has been performing this kind of thing for quite awhile.
Oh, and their presumption that “most active use” somehow indicates the best apps is flawed reasoning. Many people use software because they have no choice, are unaware of alternatives or are simply what came installed with their machines. All this app tells you is what people are *running* at any given time; it doesn’t seem to tell you *what* they’re doing or why… still, aggregating this kind of attention data could be interesting — I only wish these apps would focus more on the self-reporting aspects of managing one’s attention profile.
I think that the next bubble has less to do with free-flowing-funding and more to do with services like this that serve 1% of 1% of 1% of the I/T market. I think this is a neat service and will provide useful info for nerds (me included) who get in to this stuff. That said, how in the world will this ever reach a critical mass of users making it profitable…?
For music en editing software this might be nice.
Thanks for your comments! This is one hell of a way to wake up (yep, it’s morning here).
We not only thought of Wakoopa as geeks (not a small audience mind you), but also as gamers. I think that’s a group many of you are forgetting at the moment. If anybody “cares about desktop applications”, it would be me when I’m flexing my wallet on 70 bucks for a new first person shooter
That might not sound as sexy as music, I agree, but it’s definitely an audience.
Next to that we are already thinking of how we are going to combine this with web apps. Some kind of modular structure where developers could add tracking modules to things like Firefox to track webapp usage, or games like Unreal Tournament to track kill-death ratio.
Our business model is already in motion as we speak by the way. We’ve been talking with several small and large software companies on how they can log in to our platform and place targeted advertising. They are also very interested to see in detail how their software is doing in certain parts of the world, and what kind of people are using it. Somebody even gave me this quote: “we needed this five meetings ago”.
Thanks again for all the feedback we’ve been getting and hope to see you again the 2nd of may!
Hadn;t thought of the gaming angle.That might have legs.
@ 36 – Robert
This may be a cool app but advertising? Come on, that’s not a business model for you guys. Two problems:
1) The moment you put the ads on, people will start to leave and someone else will do it for free without ads
2) The advertisers will get very ROI because your demographic is 22-30 year old tech savvy males who don’t pay attention to ads, especially ones that relate to desktop software.
I guess you can always do the old Paul Graham strategy and sell it to someone for a quick buck. Good luck regardless.
@ Jay: I absolutely get what you’re saying. That’s why we aren’t trusting on advertising alone (although we have the ability to target it in a very unique way). I see a lot of start-ups who do, but that might not be the best way for us to do it. We like the conversations we are having now with several companies (about analytics but also a behind-the-firewall version), and we’ll take action accordingly.
This may sound bubble-ish but nobody comes up with their ultimate business model in advance. You ride the wave and zoom in on the best trajectory.
thank you very very nıce thankyou very very much…
Robert, firstly congratulations on getting a review, whatever. Secondly, this is ironic considering what Mike was writing yesterday in Crunchnotes about not breaking embargoes (I believe you, but, oops, you did it again), thirdly, it’s quite interesting how the european comments come in as we wake up. I’d wait for the rest of the world to wake up before taking a view. Now you have to struggle with not being a secret any more – you are public property! Best of luck with it.
This sounds very interesting and I will definitely give it a try.
This is another example of an attention application. This on it’s own it will create a discovery engine for what other applications people are using. So knowing which hot plugin, widget etc will be useful but if this is plugged into my lifestream then it helps build up a picture of who I am and what I read (RSS aggregator), watch (Joost) or listen too (Last.FM).
If this then uses APML.org to structure the data it will make is shareable in a standard format. Not everyone will want to know what I use but some of my friends will. This reminds me of the OPMLshare service started by Dave Winer.
“Wakoopa is backed by a fund of the three biggest media companies in the Netherlands (Ilse, IDG, Telegraaf)”
That sounds big, but to detail this: in total less than 50.000 was invested in this company.
One more addition: i’m not sure why it is essentially a bad thing that Techcrunch writes about companies they have relations with. In fact: that way Techcrunch gets its firsts, and its a normal thing for any publisher.
The problem only exists when Techcrunch writes positively about stuff that they do not really like. In this case, I’ not the one to judge about it.
In this case, the link is clear: Michael Arrington knows Boris from Fleck very well (and he is in fact speaking at his conference for a nice sum), therefore Boris (who is shareholder in Wakopa) gets to plug articles into Techcrunch, but Techcrunch is still the one to decide how to write about stuff (pos or neg). Like I said, thats the way publishing works.
Now back to discussion about Wakoopa itself.
It is always a pain to install software on the os when you already got an app which does the job already. I will give it try but I don’t expect anything.
@ Robert
I appreciate your candor. I think you are being smart and sincere. Have you thought about adapting your business model to provide billing support to services companies (legal, consulting, accounting, contract-software creation)?
A lot of these companies have complex software to help them bill hourly, but you could provide analytics to their clients on exactly what programs are being used and this may help:
A) The service firm increase billable hours
B) The client gain greater insight into what’s going on.
Just a thought. Good luck my friend.
I’d think of the site more as an xfire.com for applications.
If they can make it work with games as well as xfire does, the site might have a future.
For apps alone, it seems pretty useless since one can already guesstimate the rough figures based on the major download sites anyway.
I think this is great, and am glad to see it. Don’t many of us self-declared geeks share what we use with practically everyone we meet? Hel – I mean – heck, I bought a Firefox t-shirt, for heavens’ sake. I would like to know what people are using, especially the type of users who would actually use the service. I know 90% of the people still use IE, but aren’t the “cutting edge” mostly using Firefox? This kind of service would tell me that, if I didn’t already know. So, when I want to find a new text editor or IDE for that new programming language, where do I go first? Right now, it’s a blind search pretty much. But if I could instantly find out what people are using (let’s say Ada programmers), well, that would obviously save me some time, if I’m programming in Ada. Just an example, of course. This is not evidence of a Web2.0 “bubble”, especially since 99% of people have no idea what Web2.0 is.
This is like seeing…. tape Head Cleaner pop up on the Billboard Top 100.