Wakoopa survey reveals the software geeks use most

Ever wondered who the heck uses AOL's proprietary software in 2009, or if anyone's seriously still on Yahoo? A first-ever survey from Wakoopa holds the intriguing promise of looking primarily at the computer habits of People Like Us. For now, anyway.

Wakoopa, which provides a social-networking and application-search space for software users, garners its data through a (voluntary) desktop tracking program that clocks which apps users use and for how long, along with apps users recommend and share with each other. So far, over 75,000 users have installed the tracker.

Those users bear a striking resemblance to a lot of the people one finds hanging out here at Betanews. (The Wakoopa site puts it best: "We know what the cool kids use!") Most (88%) are male, with an average age of just under 27, and 48% say they're extremely proficient with computers and such. Just over two-fifths of the crew are US-based, with a quarter in the UK and Europe, 10% in Asia, and the rest... well, frankly, sometimes your reporter wonders where certain Betanews readers come from too. And 31% are feeling the current economic pinch, choosing to spend less than usual on software.

So what are our doppelgangers using? Well, the most popular app around, for both Mac and Windows users, is Firefox. Notice that says "most popular app," not merely "most popular browser"; the second most popular application is also a browser -- Google Chrome for PC, Safari for Mac. On the PC side, IE weighs in at #4 and Opera at #6, with Windows Explorer (hey, you need what you need), Windows Live Messenger, Word, Outlook, World of Warcraft, and Excel filling out the list. For Mac folk, it's Finder in the #3 spot, followed by Adium, iTunes, Mail, VLC media Player, QuickTime Player, Photoshop, and Textmate -- raising suspicions among the PC crowd that the Mac people are slacking not doing anything serious with their computers enjoying themselves.

The percentage of Macs out there, by the way, is slightly greater than it is in the general population, but only in Europe and the US does the platform own more than a quarter of the installed base (28.89% and 26.54% respectively). Asia (15.86%) and Africa (15.40%) are the regions with the fewest Wakoopa-running Mac users.

Also? The entire planet is playing World of Warcraft, except in Africa, where the game doesn't even appear in the top three.

As for Web apps, Wakoopa users are a social bunch, and they love their Google. Facebook is the #1 destination, but the rest of the top five goes to the search giant: Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Reader. Twitter's #5 with a bullet; according to Wakoopa, adoption of the macroblogging service grew by 7% in the first quarter of the year, with 23% of Wakoopa users now active on the service. Wikipedia, FriendFeed, MySpace, and LiveJournal fill out the top ten.

Wakoopa, which has been around since 2006, says it has 525 million hours of software tracking under its metaphorical belt, which gives it an interesting view of what's rising and falling in popularity over time. The first quarter of 2009 finds popular P2P apps on the decline -- uTorrent's down, zMule's down, even the streaming PPStream Network TV app is slumping. (On the Mac side, the Parallels virtualization software is also on the slide, interestingly enough.) The biggest gainer on the Web-apps front is Windows Live Hotmail, though nerd-oriented webcasting (Current TV, TWiT Army, Justin.tv) is doing well, as is geek gear/shirt/wine boutique Woot.com among others.

Sifting through the inaugural Wakoopa report turns up a few other fun stats. For instance, your work day may end at 5:00 pm, but based on usage, you might be spending that last hour slacking or sllllowwwwly loading your backpack -- apps use starts to fall off around 4:00 pm daily. (It alos appears that you're not really signing on until around 9:30 am; hmm.) Games usage is actually heaviest not on the weekends, when users are equally likely to fire up an office-productivity suite, design tools, or multimedia players; you're more likely to be playing between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm on a weekday if you're using a PC, or from 10:00 to midnight if you're on a Mac.

The statistics reported in Wakoopa's The State Of Apps: Software, Games and Web survey were derived from data collected between January and March 2009. users of the tracking software are self-selecting, so it's anyone's guess as to whether it's still be such a nerdy group a quarter or a year from now. Enjoy the geekitude while you can.