The Next Web

Enough for the conference now, this blog must go on

Written on April 5, 2008 – 5:57 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you came here from Digg it would be great if you could actually Digg us too! Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

Thanks for your great feedback yesterday! I’m really glad to hear that you guys had a good time and were inspired by the speakers and other attendees. Like I said yesterday, this blog will continue to report on European Web 2.0 news. Yet before we continue, I’d like to give you an overview of the posts we’ve written the last couple of days. So you can sit back, relax and relive the conference.

Wakoopa tracking the software use of early adopters

Written on December 13, 2007 – 7:17 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Robert Gaal in 11 Wakoopa, the software scrobbling service, launched ‘Alexa-like‘ statistics earlier this week. Co-founder of Wakoopa and Next Web blogger Robert Gaal told me during a drink in the fancy club 11 - overlooking Amsterdam - why these visuals are relevant to software users. “When users decide whether or not to use a program, they can check our statistics to see if the program is an one-hit-wonder, or if it has proved its value to many users on a longer term. The visuals also give smaller programs a chance, since users are able to check if some programs are suddenly getting more popular.”

The launch made it to Techcrunch, where Nick Gonzalez wrote a positive article about the new service. The first time Gonzalez blogged about Wakoopa, comments were deadly. Two days ago however, visitors expressed their appreciation for Wakoopa. At first, Gaal was pretty shocked by the negative comments in April: “The first comment just consisted of one word: ‘useless’. That’s really hard to take after months of working. For a moment there, I lost hope.”

Just for a moment though, because Gaal and his business partner Wouter Broekhof just kept on going. “After all, those few comments are just today’s fad. We’ve emailed those negative guys, asking them what they didn’t like about our service. Their criticism was useful. Moreover, we managed to convince most of them that Wakoopa isn’t a threat to their privacy”.

Wakoopa Stats

Today, the software service doesn’t seem ‘useless’ anymore. 17.000 people downloaded the Wakoopa tracking program, generating unique and seriously useful data about software. (more…)

scrobbling, software, wakoopa

1 Comment »

Top Young European Entrepreneurs

Written on July 18, 2007 – 10:38 am
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Fleck

Today, the results of Businessweeks Top 25 European Entrepreneurs under 25 were presented. Aodhan Cullen (24) of statcounter got most votes. In the top 5 there were 2 Amsterdam based companies. Wakoopa, represented by Robert Gaal and Wouter Broekhof (startup arena company at The Next Web) and Dot Kite, represented by Thomas Mylonas.

I heard that the Amsterdam guys will celebrate their victory tomorrow morning during OpenCoffee.

Congratulations to all winners.