The past five weeks since Woopra was first announced at WordCamp Dallas, it’s been a whirlwind. There have been tens of thousands of applications for a Woopra invite, and an invite was even sold on ebay recently. There are videos and podcasts showcasing Woopra, and the reviews are honest and, luckily, very kind.

Several new updates of Woopra have come out in the past five weeks, with another one due very soon, bringing with it not just bug fixes but some very exciting new features. The Woopra Sharing Access feature was just released and there are some great bells and whistles that should be in the next few releases. Get excited, folks. Woopra is getting better all the time.

General Woopra News You Can Use

John Pozadzides is running a contest called “My Woopra is Bigger Than Yours” on his personal blog inviting Woopra fans to post their Live numbers to try to beat his new record of 1,352 live visitors. Do you think you can beat that? Show off your live stats!

More than 10,000 approvals have been issued, and the waiting list is growing steadily. We need beta testers to report in and help us improve Woopra, so check in on the Woopra Beta Testers Check-In forum post and let us know how Woopra is working, or not working, for you in Bug Reports and other related sections in the Woopra Forums. Your help is much appreciated.

The new feature, Woopra Sharing Access, was added recently allowing you to share your Woopra statistics with others. This is great for those who need to track and share data across websites.

Work has been ongoing on the new servers and the developers have improved the Woopra engine, so expect to see Woopra responding much faster and this to improve even more soon.

Michael Scherotter interviews John Pozadzides about the Layered Technologies grid computing technology at Web 2.0 San Francisco recently, and John shares some insights into why Woopra has Grid technology. Grid computing is a platform which connects computers together to create a single interconnected computing system with vast amounts of processor power, RAM, and storage space, along with very flexible instant scalability. Check out the interview for more information on what is running behind the curtain of Woopra.

You can find a list of the tested Woopra Plugins in the Woopra Installation Guide. If you would like to add a Woopra Plugin to the list for testing, announce them in the Plugins and Add-ons section of the Woopra Forums.

Recent Woopra Plugin announcements include Woopra WordPress Plugin (additional version) that eliminates the webmaster’s IP address from the stats, Habari Woopra Plugin, Drupal Woopra integration, and Joomla 1.5 Woopra Plugin.

For specific instructions on integrating Woopra into various platforms, see:

• Drupal Module for Woopra Integration
• Integrating Woopra into Joomla
• Integrating Woopra into Woltlab Wbb3

For those using iWeb, you can find instructions for including Javascript in an iWeb site at Artotems Javascript in iWeb.

Is your email spam filter catching your Woopra approval? We’ve heard from some anxiously awaiting Woopra fans that approvals were caught in their email spam box. Please check to see if yours is there and make sure Woopra.com is among the approved email addresses on your email account.

Woopra is now on Wikipedia! Right now, there isn’t much to say, but it’s pretty impressive to be in an online encyclopedia so fast. Welcome to the instant world on the web.

Woopra Weekly Discussions

Woopra Weekly discussions are held in the General Discussion area of the Woopra Forums for those who want to share more about how they are using web analytics and their stats and talk more about how Woopra works for them.

Last week’s discussion was on Woopra Weekly: What do the numbers mean to you? and this week’s topic is Woopra Weekly: Numbers Into Decisions. Come join us for a chat on how the numbers work for you.

What Are They Saying About Woopra?

In John’s interview with Tyner Blain, he talks about how amazing it is that in five weeks, Woopra has gone from invisible to over 500,000 search results on Google. We’re trying to keep up with all that everyone has been saying about Woopra, and while many have been frustrated with the invitation only policy for the beta test time period, the reviews have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing presented a showcase of Woopra at DocTrain West 2008 Unconference to serious excitement and interest. According to the blogger of Just Write Click who blogged the event, “Tom Johnson did two quick demonstrations of Woopra, a blog statistics tool that helps you communicate with your blog’s readers while they’re viewing your blog. Someone from New Dehli, India, was viewing his site while we were unconferencing!”

Benjamin Patton is offering a live preview of Woopra for a short time by request:

Lets start off by thanking the people at Woopra.com on getting me into the beta quickly. Second lets thank them for raising the bar in analytics. Don’t believe me? Let me show you.

I will for the next few days offer a free Live desktop tour of Woopra via showmypc.com software. Its free to download and use and you just need to contact me to arrange a session. I am happy to answer any questions and show you exactly why this is going to be the best analytics program out.

Lady Banana says, “Woopra is the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it is very good. You can view the stats online in the web browser or better still download the desktop client which can then just sit there showing what’s happening in real-time.”

Networking for Networkers says “Woopra Lets You Stalk Your Users”:

The rule-breaking part comes when you download and install the cross-platform Woopra desktop application, and install a special plugin on your WordPress- or vBulletin-driven site (presumably more plugins are in the works). Then you can not only watch your site’s visitors in real-time, but initiate chats with them! That brings me back to my BBS-admin days.

Matteo Gallinucci calls Woopra “beautiful analytics” and says:

Woopra has more features, and the most important thing it’s there are organized and ready to read and understand; I think it’s better of Google Analytics, because it’s more direct and immediate. But if you want custom statistics, use Google Analytics. You can view all features, some are really innovative, like the live tracking (I adore it) and the chat with visitors (wow!!).

Well, stay tuned, Matteo. Customizable statistics and analytics are coming your way!

Web Analytics Book reports in “Woopra Web Analytics Enables Active Sales” that “[Woopra] doesn’t look much different than other web analytics solutions, but it has one very interesting feature, that could be very valuable: Instant Messaging with real-time visitors. Woopra enables you to engage your visitors by starting a conversation with them; a friendly popup will appear on the web page to establish the chat.”

James Mowery of Performancing loved the beauty of Woopra, saying:

Woopra is a new startup that is doing something quite impressive with typical website analytics. While there is only so much more information that can be gathered with current analytics platforms, one of the most popular ways to improve is by enhancing the interface and display of data. Currently in beta, Woopra does exactly that.

My first impressions lead me to believe it will be an impressive application, and it is just so much fun to know exactly what visitors are doing instantly. The signup process was pretty easy, but if you decide to join, you will have to wait to be approved. After getting everything squared off, I installed a few lines of code to the footer of my site, and I was ready to go.

Visual Coma loved the idea of the desktop client, using the power of your computer to run the program rather than being limited by current web application constraints:

The real deal is the program Woopra offers for download. That is where the juicy stuff is. Once you open the program you automatically feel like your watching the stock market or something. (made me want to stroke my beard and think about important stuff) Perhaps this is a puff piece of a program, something to make people feel good. I’ll admit for the small timers like me it’s kinda cool to see a ton of useless stats about my site. The bigger picture is what Im excited about.

Jigar Mehta joins many saying “Woopra rocks!!” “Now, I know what content is mostly liked by people out there and which blog post’s ranking is top most in search engines! And all these things I can see on a desktop application (they have a very good and efficient Java Desktop Client!), no need to go and watch things from Web Interface! Woopra is really good, believe me!”

Donncha O’Caoimh took Woopra for a test drive and admitted:

I was slow to install the desktop client, simply because I have a ‘Oh no, Java is too much trouble’ switch in my brain from long ago when I attempted to install the JRE. This time it was much easier, thanks to Ubuntu’s repositories…

After installing the Java runtime, installation of Woopra was simple. I’ve been looking at it now for a few hours and it’s nice. The ticker tape stats at the bottom are a neat touch, especially the up and down markers that give an indication of how your traffic compares with the day before.

Unfortunately I don’t obsess about traffic stats any more. If I did, I would absolutely love this application. If I was targeting a particular keyword and honing the SEO aspects of my site then I would find this Woopra invaluable.

Blue Knight Sojourn of the Mind says, “If you do not know what Woopra is you have to take a look at it. It looks like it is going to be the best statistics program around for blogs. I found out about it form Lorelle’s Blog Post about it. After evaluating it from other blogs and subscribing to Woopra Beta . After a while I got the approval and have been using it ever since. If you need statistics for your blogs this is the best program around.”

Rock Fuse adores the new Woopra Sharing Access and says:

The official Woopra blog announced yesterday about their new service: Woopra Sharing Access. I think the name of the service says it all. To make a long story short, Woopra now allows you to share your sites’ statistics with any third party you want.

Can’t make any use of that? Let’s see. Your blog’s private advertisers need to know how well your blog is doing. Sure, you can always ‘tell’ them how you’re doing. But let’s take your disclosure policy a bit further and prove your self worth to the people you’re earning money from. Let’s show them you live blog stats right here, right now! Woopra Sharing Access let’s you share your live traffic data with anyone you want!

Carol of Carol’s Vault is still a little on the fence, though admits that Woopra is pretty impressive. “Now, aside from having lots of cool analytics capabilities, Woopra also let you tag your visitors and members, and allows the webmasters to interact with the visitors through Click-to-chat feature.”

Stay tuned, Carol. Woopra is only going to get better.

Jonathan Boettcher summarizes Woopra in the most unique way, winning our favorite quote of the month:

You know in the movies when they’ve always has this cool laptop with some program on there that seemingly lets him rule the world? You know, they can access whatever they want, hack into things and do cool-looking stuff. Well the little techno-control-geek in me has always wanted something like that, and I’ve got a built in sucker button for anything that looks remotely close.

Well I just got my very own blogosphere-ruling software. It’s called Woopra.

Woopra is the Chuck Norris of Site Analytics.

Woopra makes Google Analytics look like a old donkey pulling a wooden cart with square wheels.

Here are some more reviews and comments on Woopra:

• Mobi·gas·mic - Woopra- Real Time, InDepth Monitoring of your Site
• Woopra til kamp mod Google Analytics
• Blogger and Podcaster - The Scoop on Woopra
• Woopra - Live Website Tracking and Analytics Site
• Jigar Mehta - Woopra is Amazing!
• Jeffro2pt0 - Exponential Growth For Woopra
• One Cool Site - How to get on the Woopra bandwagon
• Open Source Marketer - Tracking Realtime Statistics Using Woopra
• Boom Atomic - Woopra is my new addiction
• Woopra: Live-Statistik-Fernsehen der Extraklasse - Frank Helmschrott
• Lumières dans la nuit - Übers Bloggen - Spitzelwahn für Blogger

There are now a few videos out there showcasing Woopra and showing off some of the neat features including Konvict Collins, Johny’s Woopra Demo, and Jeff McCord’s video on Woopra, in addition to the first preview by GeekBrief.TV.

What’s New in Woopra?

The next upgrade of the Woopra beta will be coming soon. For Woopra members, this will happen automatically next time you login. If you are one of those who obsesses over Woopra 24/7, then we’ll announce the next upgrade to remind you to log off and then log back in again.

There have been more than 50 bug fixes so far, and the list is getting nailed down in time for the next update of Woopra coming soon.

What’s very exciting are the new features coming out which include:

• New calendar feature in the Analytics Panel to improve the ease of setting a timeline.
• Visitors data will be more customizable.
• The Live Map will feature post titles and search keywords as visitors land on your site.
• Visitor path tracing will improve.
• Add ability to track and evaluate referrer links.
• Avatars have been improved to generate faster.
• The time and date bug will be fixed so it shows the same time across Woopra’s desktop client.
• Deeper integration with databases through Woopra Plugins.

The Woopra development team is working long hard hours to help out as many as they can in the Woopra Forums and work on the beta release. We should have news soon on the release candidate which will take Woopra to the next public level. Be patient with us as we grow and make Woopra your source for web analytics and more.