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.

Well OK, it’s just one billion actually.

Just one billion?

Wizzard Media announced today that the company’s podcast hosting units had delivered 1 billion downloads in 2007. That’s a whole lot of episodes, but what does it mean for the future of podcasters and podcast networks, and who gets the credit for moving all those bits?

Wizzard’s Libsyn and Switchpod subsidiaries are podcast hosting companies. They began by selling hosting services to podcasters, and that is still a large part of their business/. Libsyn, in particular, provides an inexpensive, easy-to-use service that’s almost always recommended to podcast newbies, and those faced with sudden spikes in subscribership. That’s because Libsyn charges based on how much storage you use, not for bandwidth. Wizard/Libsyn hosts some of the most popular shows around, but for $5 a month, it can host your grandmother’s podcast, too.

In 2007, the company began inking deals with ad brokers and content providers in a very public way: it had launched a business-focused podcasting service in 2006. suddenly, their press releases started to resemble those of companies who marketed themselves primarily as podcast aggregators or networks.

I think it’s fair to say that credit for the sheer number of podcast downloads delivered by Wizzard companies in 2007 (I personally accounted for several thousand of them) goes to their hosting customers. The Libsyn service, which has been plagued by intermittent service outages and other growing pains, has been a boon to anyone wanting to publish a podcast without worrying about how a popularity spike would affect their personal bandwidth costs. And the company’s participation in the podcasting community, and its DIY spirit, have kept many users loyal, even in the face of hiccups.

It’s also an encouraging sign for podcasting that Wizzard’s announcement was picked up by ReadWriteWeb, then by TechMeme. Podcasting companies and happenings don’t tend to get the attention of the big tech blogs. The 1 billion number may be more of a mile marker than a real turning point in the industry, but so what?

Blogger & Podcaster is a sponsor of the second annual Mac Mingle, a party open to all Macworld Expo badge holders. You’ll meet famous Mac podcasters, and a whole lot of other very cool people, and enjoy snacks and a cash bar. Save Thursday, January 17, 8 PM for us on your calendar.

Right before the mingle, at 6 PM, Adam Christianson of The Maccast will host a Mac podcaster meetup, featuring some leading Mac talkers. Both events happen at Jillian’s Restaurant, just across from the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. If you can make it the the Mac Mingle and Mac Podcaster Meetup, please say hello. ‘ll be the one in the stylin’ Blogger & Podcaster shirt.

I have three news items for you today. Not bad for mid-December.

• Movable Type has gone open source. Six Apart announced its intention to take the blogging platform open in June, or at least to create an open source version. with the release of a fully open source MT, users now have complete ability to modify and redistribute the blogging platform. Here’s hoping that an open source MT will encourage the development of blog themes, add-ons, and other tools from developers.
• Zune Insider (the blog written by Zune Marketplace podcast honcho Rob Greenlee, reports that the service is back online after a planned update that was done yesterday. Doesn’t look as if the update added any podcast-specific features.
• The Scoble rumor is mostly true. He told a Le Web audience, (and later blogged) that he will leave PodTech on January 14. He says he’s weighing options for his future employment, and that the rumored move to Fast Company is one of these. Scoble’s explanation of his reasons for leaving PodTech was not written in corporate speak per se, but it might as well have been. There was a lot about “working with the new management”, “change in focus” etc., which you can read for yourself.

Just noticed that the iTunes Store has posted a Best of 2007 podcast list. Actually, there are four lists: new audio, new video, classic audio, and classic video.

The winners are drawn heavily from “big media” outlets including NPR and various TV networks, but a few notable indies made it in, too. Oddly, the “new” and “classic” designations seem to be a bit backwards, but it’s great to see the list, and great to see some excellent shows on it.

Congratulations to past B&P featured podcasts including: Ask A Ninja, PotterCast, MuggleCast, TWIT, The MacCast, Grammar Girl, Mighty Mommy, and MommyCast. Big props to B&P columnist Rob Walch whose Podcast411 made the list. along with Coverville, PodRunner, The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab, IndieFeed Alternative, and Tiki Bar TV, too.

To see the list, open the iTunes Podcast page and click Best of 2007 Podcasts.

The Blog Council is a new alliance of corporate bloggers, designed to address issues that are specific to creating, operating, and using blogs in a corporate environment. The council, which was announced today, was founded by AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Wells Fargo.

Organizer Andy Sernovitz (founder and former head of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association) wrote in an email, “This is the first voice saying that companies have a right to participate in the blogosphere, and do it under their own terms. Companies will blog well and ethically…but they will do it differently than personal or small business blogs.”

Sernovitz emphasized the corporate focus of the Blog Council, pointing out that the group would not include vendors, indie bloggers, or small business bloggers. The focus is clearly on large companies with global brands and far-flung communications, and blog-management issues. He says large corporations blog differently than smaller organizations.

Topics of interest for Blog Council members include: managing blogs in multiple languages, dealing with large numbers of employee bloggers, understanding the impact of consumer-generated media on brands, engaging with bloggers who write about companies and brands, and crisis communication in a corporate blog environment.

Sernovitz’ company, GasPedal, will run the Blog Council on behalf of its members. The council isn’t a non-profit trade group, but a business council, similar to those run by the Gartner Group, Forrester Research, and The Conference Board, according the the council’s FAQ.

The Blog Council Web site says the group will hold an unconference in Orlando, FL, January 22, 2008, and that it will be open to corporate bloggers.

Seems that Technorati has relaunched, with a new front page, and a tightened focus on a blogger audience. As is predictable, the reviews focus on what the site has not done, and to what extent Technorati lags Google Blog Search.

Yesterday, TechCrunch provided a good overview of the new front page, which has separate sections for blog-generated stories and mainstream news pieces. Blog chatter on all topics (attention) is scored below each story. As I look at the Technorati front page this morning, it’s just weird to see a People Magazine story in the top spot. But that’s just me.

Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee, where video is what it’s all about, says that Technorati’s failure to take the viral nature of video into account in its listings of hot stories and sources limits the site’s ability to track cultural touchstones. Writes Gannes:

Technorati knows who’s talking about what online because that’s it’s job. How hard would it be to create a frequently updated index of the most popular and fastest-rising videos on the web? It would be a lot easier than figuring out what’s most popular in the “blogosphere,” which is no longer an identifiable insular community.

Interesting point. And one that might be applied to audio podcasts as well, if that medium can ever acquire the rank and search infrastructure that YouTube provides in the video world.

The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) has elected a slate of officers, committee chairs and advisory board members. The election, which had originally been planned for October, was completed late last month. Libsyn’s Chris MacDonald chairs the ADM board, while Susan Bratton of Personal Life Media, was named vice chair. Matthew Snodgrass of the Porter Novelli PR firm is the ADM’s new secretary, and Podcast.com’s Duncan Perry was elected treasurer. .

A look down the list of other committee chairs and office-holders reveals an interesting mix of podcast production entrepreneurs, service and advertising company representatives, and folks from Microsoft, Nokia, and NPR.

Here is the complete list of officers and board members:

• Chair: Chris MacDonald, Chris MacDonald, Libsyn PRO Enterprise Platform and Indiefeed
• Vice Chair: Susan Bratton, Personal Life Media
• Secretary: Matthew Snodgrass, Porter Novelli
• Treasurer: Duncan Perry, Podcast.com, Treedia.com
• Committee Chair: Advertising Standards: Brian McMahon, National Podcasting System
• Committee Chair: Education & Outreach: Rob Walch, Wizzard Media
• Committee Chair: Measurement: Angelo Mandato, Raw Voice
• Committee Chair: Membership Committee: Bryan Moffett, NPR Digital Media
• Committee Chair: Terminology Standardization: David Rowley, Kiptronic, Inc.

Advisory Board

• CC Chapman, The Advance Guard
• Jonathan Cobb, Kiptronic Inc.
• John Furrier, Podtech
• Rob Greenlee, Microsoft Zune
• John Havens, BlogTalkRadio
• Risto Koski, Nokia
• Jim Louderback, Revision3
• Mark McCrery, Podtrac
• Elisabeth McLaury Lewin, PodcastingNews.com
• Kent Nichols, AskANinja.com
• Tim Street, French Maid TV

As Bratton told me some time ago, the ADM’s focus is exclusively on the money-making aspects of podcasting, and specifically on developing standards and metrics for podcast advertising. We’ll be watching to see how ADM makes that happen.

I’ll be chatting with ADM bigwigs this week, and we’ll be following the group here, and in the pages of B&P. You can keep up directly by reading the ADM blog.

Note: Blogger & Podcaster was asked by BlogWorld Expo organizers tto pass along what follows. This magazine is a BlogWorld Expo sponsor.

Mark Cuban (who is a blogger, but is usually identified as a “billionaire entrepreneur”) will give a closing keynote presentation at BlogWorld Expo, November 9. The schedule lists a closing keynote panel, so it’s unclear if Cuban will share the stage, or present on his own. Other BlogWorld keynoters include Leo Laporte and Matt Mullenweg.

Congrats to Evan Williams for selling Odeo for a reported $1,000,000 and welcome to the industry in a big way SonicMountain. Launched in November 2006 this little known group is obviously filled with folks with big plans as you can see from the news on their website. I’m sure they’ll pay attention to the things not to do as refreshingly detailed by Evan and reported on GigaOM.

- Larry