We are very pleased to have an on-the-scene report about the announcement of Woopra, from last weekend’s WordCamp Dallas. Frequent B&P contributor, and WordCamp Dallas speaker Lorelle VanFossen gives us the details.

The hottest topic, other than the release of WordPress 2.5, coming out of WordCamp Dallas this past weekend was Woopra.

Woopra developer John Pozadzides of One Man’s Blog, originally intended only to offer a demo and give away a few invitations to this real-time Web analytic program. Attendees knew within a few minutes that this was a program that would literally change the face, content, and interaction of their blogs.

Currently in beta testing, Woopra offers real-time statistics on your blog’s traffic and activity. It tells you what is happening on your blog right now, this very second. John asked those in the audience with laptops or iPhones to go to his blog. Displayed live on the two large screens before us, we watched the numbers in Woopra jump from 48 down to 36, and then soar up to 68 then into the 90s as participants brought up his blog.

Woopra is not a Web application, though it does monitor Web site traffic and activity. It installs directly on your computer and then accesses the blog through a Javascript within the blog code. There is a Woopra plugin for WordPress users that helps with the Javascript insertion, and the program features an extensive API for building future apps.

As visitors arrive on a blog, Woopra displays basic information within its stats panels on the visitor such as their geographic location, computer type, browser type, and basic statistics. If a visitor has commented or is registered on the blog, the anonymous name is replaced with the name they provided, as long as the user hasn’t cleared his or her cookies.

A powerful feature of the program is a map displaying radiating radar points of where the visitor lives geographically. Hover over a blinking dot and a balloon tip pops up with the place name. The radiating dots grew dramatically over Dallas as more and more participants landed on his blog. It looked like an animation of a nuclear strike over the heart of Texas.

As I logged into his blog, John explained about the most exciting feature of Woopra, interaction with visitors. On the overhead displays, the audience saw me “arrive”, with my name on the screen, showing that I was in Dallas. Then he initiated a conversation with me through the interface, which I accepted from my computer. We “chatted” live via Woopra’s built-in chat feature. I did not have Woopra installed on my machine. Woopra chat does not require that both parties have the software installed, breaking a barrier that prevents many online communications tools from working.

The WordCamp participants went nuts. This breaks all the standards of blog participation. Imagine watching someone dig around your blog looking for specific information, tracking the keywords that brought them to the site and the pages they are viewing in real time. Bloggers can create a filter trigger that will pop up an announcement on their computer screen if someone visits the page that matches that filter’s keywords and criteria. For example, you could choose to get a notice announcing visitors from a specific country, using a certain language, or hunting for a specific subject. Why not offer to help them directly live by initiating a chat window and asking, “May I help you?” Think of what this will mean for businesses to help them directly serve their customers. The potential is endless.

Cali and Neal of GeekBrief.TV videoed Woopra in action, then blogged about it with glee featuring an in-depth interview with John. TechCrunch jumped on this new blog stats toy immediately, as did Mashable, bringing a storm of sign ups and demands for access. Woopra developers are working overtime to try to meet the demand the best they can, but this is still in the testing stages.

Here are some more exciting features of Woopra, with more coming as it continues to grow and develop:

• Graphics: Woopra offers clear, easy-to-read, and colorful animated graphics for viewing the various data sets such as maps, charts, graphs, and more.
• Data Explored Thoroughly: The analytic package in Woopra offers a wide variety of ways to view your blog’s various data sets, from the broadest details to the finite, with charts and graphics, by the numbers and popularity. With the dynamic API, there are myriad ways the data could be manipulated for sorting and reporting for various needs.
• Ability to Export Data: Your blog’s data isn’t locked within Woopra. There is an export feature to CVS, so you can move your data into a spreadsheet or database for more concentrated analysis and reporting.
• Logs Historical and Current Data: When you install Woopra on your computer and connect it with your blog, it picks up historical data from the server files as well as current, so your statistics aren’t limited to when you start using Woopra. It looks back into the past to help you understand how your blog traffic and visitors work, and what isn’t working.
• Visitor Tagging: The ability to “tag” your visitors through filters and tags improves tracking and identification of your regular readers, turning the numbers into people.
• Instant Messaging: The chat feature is a great way to connect directly with readers. The recipient can deny the request, but it’s a great way to give personal support and communicate directly with your readers, breaking the comment box barriers.
• Information Now - Real Time: Some statistics and analytics programs update hourly or once a day. Woopra gives you real-time information on what is happening on your blog right now, allowing you to respond to the statistics and events on your blog in the moment, not later after the numbers come in.
• Notifications: The notification area is an “on-demand” component that provides popup announcements of events, actions, and matches visitor criteria, which improves visitor tracking, but also helps make the data actionable, helping you respond to the needs when they happen.
• Developer Tools: Woopra offers a full featured API and plugin hook system for plugins and add-ons to encourage further data analysis and features.

This program could revolutionize the way we gather information about our visitors and interact with them. Imagine being able to communicate with your visitors without any extra software or hardware. Imagine getting information you need in a way you can really use it to focus your blog’s content to better server your readership. The possibilities are endless.

It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Once you site up with a Woopra account, the admin panels allow you to add your sites and download an optional WordPress plugin to make the process of adding the Javascript to your blog easier from the Administration panels. If you cannot add a plugin to your blog, or want to add the Javascript manually in a text widget or in some other fashion, you can choose the manual installation method.

Woopra is in beta testing, restricted to invites only and first come first serve registration. To get an invitation to try Woopra, sign up and register your blog, even if you are on WordPress.com. They will send you an invitation when they can. They are working with Layered Technologies and 3Tera, which has graciously offered 100 servers to accommodate this unexpected interest and enthusiasm.

Matt Mullenweg and his Automattic team of WordPress developers were seriously impressed by Woopra, and there is some discussion going on about including it within the WordPress Community. There is a post on the WordPress.com Forum requesting access to Woopra for WordPress.com bloggers.