Last.fm lets you share your music life, MySpace lets you share your social life, Flickr lets you share your pictorial life, and now Wakoopa lets you share your…well, software life. Amsterdam-based Wakoopa, which launched today, is a social network for sharing software and game use. Built by two twenty-somethings, it allows you to have a ’software profile,’ making your daily desktop life public.
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How It Works
Wakoopa’s signup process is one of the easiest I’ve ever seen (at least on a social network!). Users provide a username, password, and get a page with the download links for the Wakoopa tracking software. Choosing from either PC or Mac (um, aren’t Linux users software-lovers as well? After all they do make it themselves ;-)), users install the software which puts a system tray icon in their taskbar. The software, literally, is nothing but an icon which asks you to put your Wakoopa username and password upon being clicked on. Of course, in the backend, your daily software usage patterns are passed on to Wakoopa which keeps track of your software profile.
Once you’ve got the software setup, and this process is faster than reading the last paragraph, you’re pretty much set. If you check out your profile at Wakoopa, you’ll see a list of the current programs running and user reviews of them. Also, there’s a very useful list of “New versions of my software,” which would probably be the one thing I’d definitely use Wakoopa for. There is also a “Software I might like” section, which provides recommendations based on your current software usage.
Opinion
As a social network, I think Wakoopa is one of the best executed ones I’ve seen in a while. Everything from the signup process to seeing your software recommendations takes like than 5 minutes, and its interface is also very easy to use. As an idea, while I don’t think this kind of a thing will ever reach the mainstream, I am certain this is going to become a must-signup for geeks.
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No mention of privacy here. What are they planning on doing with all that data about what applications I am using?
thats a good question alex.
btw the author forgot to tell us that we need to install a program (for login 321Kib). I dont like that ideas.
Hmm, if it was OSS, then maybe, but installing a random EXE seems shady…
[...] to signup and even gives you software recommendations and update notices based on what you use!read more | digg [...]
I don’t see this network ever taking off due to the fact that people won’t want to run the program or will be concerned about their privacy.
this seems like crazy enough…why would i want an application running all the time that i dont trust…this is like surfing porno sitting in a glass room with your mom’s sleeping next door
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somehow this just seems pointless, yea it would be cool to have a little app in your tray that monitors which programs you use and how frequently - but I’d say that most people have their browser of choice open, along with some sort of notepad/word/claris works/open office program open a lot and their music player. It seems really really pointless
that’s why they have codeproject
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[...] Social networks are notorious for being somewhat of a pain (MySpace), or at least not terribly productive, but after using Wakoopa for a bit it does seem useful. Not only do you get a snapshot of what programs you use most, but it also alerts you of software with newer releases. If you’re not keen on having your program usage tracked, Wakoopa probably isn’t for you, but if you’re into trackers like Last.fm, you can think of Wakoopa as a Last.fm for your desktop applications. Wakoopa [via Rev2] [...]
Wakoopa seems interesting. I might check it out eventhough most people might not like the idea of being profiled of what you you or what you like.
[...] to signup and even gives you software recommendations and update notices based on what you use!read more | digg [...]
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Hello!
I’d recommend PG Social Networking Software by PilotGroup.Ltd for easy Social Network creation http://www.datingpro.com/social/features.php.
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[...] from Y Combinator and goes after the idea of “ridiculously easy time management.” We wrote last year about Wakoopa, a service that tracks your software usage a la Last.fm for music, and while similar, [...]