Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Hootsuite: Morphing from Twitter Client to *Badass Social Media Dashboard*

While I don't personally use social media dashboard/tool, HootSuite, I have a number of friends and colleagues who do. At some point, I plan to give it a try. To that end, I do take a personal and professional interest in knowing as much about the spectrum of social tools and networks as possible, particularly since I'm on the hook for staying on top of these things for work and for the weekly podcast I do with Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet (note: live interview on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show coming with Hootsuite founder, Ryan Holmes, on January 14).

When I found about some of the latest features that Hootsuite was announcing this morning (9 AM PT), I couldn't resist at least spending a couple of minutes letting the folks that read this blog know about it. For a more thorough review, you can check out Hootsuite's blog or Mashable, but for the "quick-n-dirty version, see below...

What's new:
  • Integration with Facebook, LinkedIn & Ping.fm
    • Users may now update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles from one location
    • According to HootSuite they are the only Twitter client which allows you to schedule updates for these individual social networks
    • Users may manage social profiles for multiple accounts
    • Users can now read your friends' Facebook and LinkedIn updates and view in-line Facebook comments within HootSuite
  • Direct integration with LinkedIn (this is a big one in my mind)
    • As a result of LinkedIn opening their developer API over the weekend (more on this from Jeremiah Owyang here), HootSuite jumped in (and to my knowledge) is the first to have integrated direct LinkedIn status updates
  • HootSuite is one of the first clients (I believe that Seesmic is the other) that allows users to manage lists. Users may now:
    • Create lists by dragging and dropping users into columns
    • Import lists you've already created & save them as a column in HootSuite
Clearly, Hootsuite is working hard to stay in front of the everchanging landscape of social tools and functionality. For that, they are to be applauded. How long can they keep up with this frantic pace? Who knows, but I like the way CEO, Ryan Holmes thinks. When asked for a quote on Hootsuite's latest release, he replied...
This update sees HootSuite morphing from Twitter client to badass social media dashboard. We're constantly listening to our users to hear what they want. Beyond that, we're thinking about what they might want that they haven't even imagined yet. We think about these things and then try to make them a reality.
Anyone that knows me at all will recognize that Ryan's words are music to my ears. Congratulations to the folks at Hootsuite. I look forward to hearing more!

1 comment:

  1. Loving this news, Aaron. I hadn't heard. I use Hootsuite occasionally--usually to (gasp! yup, it's true) preschedule tweets during events such as Social Media Breakfast.

    I've just tested out the advanced-scheduling feature of a Facebook status message, and here's one disappointing note: I'm limited to 140 characters. Even though Facebook certainly allows more than that, there must be a limitation within the Hootsuite interface (maybe TweetDeck is the same?).

    But in general, a nice development here that I plan to work into my workflow.

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