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.
Seems similar to the Mac-focused site:
http://osx.iusethis.com/
But innovative in that it has a ’scrobbler’-like component
I am not sure whether I would even consider using this service – I dont see any pain it solves.
I think this is a great idea. I’d be interested to see how well the technology is executed and learn more about the team. Other than that, how can I invest? (if I had the money, that is)
One more thing: wakoopa?? What does that mean? Your logo confuses me more. However, on second thought I think it has more to do with Nick Gonzalez’ writing style here. Sorry Nick, but not everyone knows what Last.fm is. If you are going to use a long analogy to start an article make it something more universal, or at least relevant. I overlooked this article 3 times before I finally read it, just because I didn’t care about this new music site called Wakoopa.
Tracking usage behind the corporate firewall is a potential huge money maker, there are thousands of companies that would love a way to track how much time their employees are using the software on their machines.
If this makes it easy and secure for them to do it, they won’t need advertising which presumably will only be used on the consumer version.
I’d say this web app’s success depends on what it actually *does* with the collected tracking data. Just telling me how long I’ve been using app X: Boring. Recommending Firefox to me because I’m using Safari a lot: Useless.
But if the tracker was actually aware of the semantics of my application usage, it could be really useful. For example, if I’m often editing CSS code in a general-purpose text editor, it could recommend a specialized CSS editor to me, preferably even one whose interface is similar to another application I’m often using (and thusly easy to learn for me) or made by a company whose other software I’m often using. This could really be a boon to the average user, too.
What a crappy domain name. Hope it’s at least a Dutch word with some significant meaning. I take that back, Dutch or not it’s a terrible domain name!
Looks like a great idea -
Seems to me to be rather pointless. Apart from IT managers, why would anyone care about how frequently they use an application? I think the only reason this got funding is for the kind of data that can be harvested from this idea.
Jumping on a bandwagon I feel….
“Just telling me how long I’ve been using app X: Boring.”
That’s not what I was thinking.
As an architecture student, I think it can be interesting to see how many hours I spend drawing, rendering, photoshopping, … the days before a final presentation. I think of Wakoopa as a basic time-tracking app.
Wakoopa.com went live today so go check it out. Using it is very different than just talking about it…