For years, I’ve used and recommended the free Wakoopa Social service as a way to track the applications one uses. But today, Wakoopa announced that it’s closing the service so it can focus on other areas, including corporate research.
“Six years ago we decided to make discovering software social,” a post to the Wakoopa Blog reads. “Today this part of Wakoopa comes to an end … We are closing down Wakoopa Social. Wakoopa will continue to exist, only now focusing entirely on the corporate research community.”
I’ve linked to my own Wakoopa profile from my “What I Use” roundups, the most recent of which dates to last month. Obviously, for someone like me, Wakoopa is a nice, transparent way for readers and listeners to see what I’m really using, often a more accurate indicator about a product’s usefulness than a review or other article. For example, last week, my five most recently used applications and web apps were Skype, Windows Live Hotmail, Twitter, Handbrake, and Google Reader, according to the service.
Wakoopa isn’t shutting down immediately, so I’m hoping to find a suitable replacement. (In fact, if you have an idea along those lines, please do let me know via email or in the comments section below.) According to the post, Wakoopa Social will stop tracking application usage on June 23, 2012 (one week from now), and the service will shut down completely on June 30. Those who wish to export their tracking data can do so through July 1, 2012, Wakoopa says.
Ah well.