HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

Refreshed and Ready

A few months back, we launched the HootSuite Learning program to offer comprehensive training for social media professionals about the nuances and features of HootSuite. We also sought to offer an environment to exchange ideas and discuss trends, tactics and strategies for managing outreach and listening activities.

Now with the first batch of grads proudly displaying their badges, we’ve tuned up the Learning site to be a bit more “Hoot-like” with easier access to the courses, quizzes and the important directory of certified pros.

If you are already a student, take a look and see what you think. Not a student yet? Perhaps you’ll be inspired to join up.

Big Owls on Campus

Now that the quizzes are completed and the grades are in, we’re happy to congratulate the first group of HootSuite Learning program students who are now certified as “HootSuite Professionals.”

All graduates are listed on the HootSuite Certified Professional directory, plus you can identify them by the insignia proudly displayed on their websites.

The list of pros are sortable by city and country so you can find a consultant close to your location as needed from USA, Canada, UK, The Netherlands, Switzerland, South Africa, Ecuador and more.

Guest Faculty

Along with the quizzes and learning modules, HootSuite Learning provides students with “stories from the trenches” as told by an assortment of experienced marketers, authors and managers.

As a recap: In the first month, Lewis Howes demonstrated the power of LinkedIn and shared tips on maximizing this popular business networking tool.

Up next was Lisa Kacerosky from legendary curator of humor, Icanhascheezburger.com. Lisa blew the audience away by revealing the 50+ different profiles she personally manages using the HootSuite and showed exactly how one person can accomplish such a huge task.

Then came Chris Garrett — co-author (with Darren Rowse) of the book “ProBlogger – Secrets for blogging your way to a six figure income — who discussed the business of blogging and creating compelling content for your social media channels.

Following up with a different perspective was Rich Harris, the customer support manager at hardware manufacturer Seagate who discussed tactics for providing customer support using HootSuite.

@ambermac -- photo by @kk

The latest speaker was Amber MacArthur, host of online shows, writer of columns and author of “Power Friending” who shared her insights about the power and benefits of networking.

Next up is Sean Malarkey discussing ins and outs of Twitter and then an encore webinar by Lewis Howes.

Plus Dave Olson, HootSuite’s Marketing and Community Director, has participated to share freshly released tools, as well as providing some context about how ideas become features in the HootSuite universe.

Ready to Join?

Sounds great! Get signed-up for the on-going HootSuite Learning University program for only $47/mo.

Sign-up for the ongoing HootSuite Learning University program

Argh HootSuite buccaneers! Here’s a fresh news round-up to share more “Social Owl” feedback and reviews, plus some tasty iPhone bits too.

To all of you who are spreading the HootSuite story — thanks! We enjoy reading your remarks and gathering your feedback to make HootSuite even ummm… hoot-ier.

We’ll keep the news round-ups coming in the days ahead but if you need more, check out HootSuite’s social bookmarks stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the first notices.

Now, here’s your fresh dossier:

The BizCATS – REVIEWS: HOOTSUITE – How to Manage Your Social Network Marketing

Tim McMahon – We’ve watched Hootsuite for some time as well as being an active user. One thing that’s impressive is that in their ultracompetitive product space, the company consistently brings out improvements and enhancements – even to the free version! Their latest announcement brings some great new features in the Social CRM arena that will be of real interest and value to many of us.

Macworld and PCWorld – HootSuite Adds Foursquare Integration, IOS 4 Support

HootSuite, an app aimed at Twitter and Facebook power users, now features Foursquare integration as well as support for iOS 4’s app switching features, thanks to an update by Hootsuite Media that arrived on the App Store this week. Version 1.1.5 of the iPhone app also promises performance boosts, and customizable re-sizing of fonts.

National Post – Amber Mac: Social Media for Authors – The Tools

Amber Mac was a recent guest presenter on a HootSuite U webinar. Amber had some great things to say about HootSuite is this article:

HootSuite – Don’t be fooled, social media does take time.  Fortunately, HootSuite can save you time.  What I love about this service is that you can use it to send a status update to multiple social networking sites at once.  For example, I use HootSuite to send a post to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter at the same time.  You can also use this tool to schedule messages, just in case you’re going on vacation or don’t want to forget a certain date, and it will allow you to measure your link traffic.

CalvinAyre.com – Why I’m switching from Tweetdeck to Hootsuite

With all of the noise in the Social Media space lately it is nice to see a company providing tools that simplify the needs of individuals and business. I look forward to using Hootsuite moving forward and seeing the company grow. I’m sure Invoke Media will be launching some more interesting tools and applications in the near future and I will be sure to cover them here on the Tablog.

Mobile Knots – Hootsuite for iPhone gets Foursquare Integration and iOS4 support

This update, which is applicable to both Hootsuite Lite (Free) and Hootsuite for iPhone ($2.99) includes the much requested Foursquare integration, customizable fonts re-sizing, ability to choose between twitter’s native RT style or the original RT style or both and support for iOS4 features like App Switching etc.

Cynthia Markets for Today – How I Love Hootsuite!

So with all this social media that I do for fun, how can I post all my information for all of you in an efficient and effective way to use my time wisely?  You guessed it:  my friend, Hootsuite. The best friend a social media strategist could have.

With Hootsuite, you can have more control over your content updates AND you can track click statistics with Hootsuite’s built in analytics.

More

Remember: check out HootSuite’s social bookmarks stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the first notices for all the news.

Look at me, now look at your Twitter tool #oldspice

Influential Releases

With 2 big releases this past week, there’s enough news to fill a half dozen news round-ups so let’s get underway with a focus on influence measuring.

We added Klout scores to HootSuite a few releases back to help gauge the breadth and power of individual networks. This time around, we added a “filter by Klout score tool” which allows you to only display Twitter messages send by people with a specified score.

While not perfect by any means, these algorithmically-produced score allows you to learn which followers and contacts enjoy the widest reach which is deal for quickly identifying campaign candidates or response priority.

A few campaigns have made a splash by using Klout to identify influencers and then outreach to them with their offers.

One example is Virgin Airlines who tracked down high-Klout-ers in San Francisco and Toronto and offered free flights to promote the airline’s new service between those two fine cities.

Mashable provides some more background using the example of a Toronto-blogger Breanna Hughes who scored a free flight with her 42 Klout score. Despite the significant perks, there were not coverage requirements.

Another participant was Social Media Club’s Chris Heuer who used his flight to host a club meeting in Toronto, ergo:

ChrisHeuer: stoked to be going to TOR w/ help from @VirginAmerica (thanks to @klout). going to do 1st @socialmediaclub visit to TOR & Niagra #VXToronto -  5:45 PM Jul 14th

In the past few days, many HootSuite users have mentioned their thoughts about the tool and some speculate how the Klout scores are tabulated while others question the idea of measuring influence.

Here are a few which we gathered for your perusal to tactical ways in which people might use this tool. As usual, you can grab the full firehose of HootSuite news via the social bookmarks stream and/or by following @hootwatch.

How Klout Scores Work | Engauge Blog & @KathleneHestir » How Klout Scores Work

Hootsuite released new social CRM tools yesterday that allow you to filter your keyword and search columns for Twitter by keywords – and even more importantly by influencer. Recently Hootsuite also integrated Klout Scores, a score that measures your influence across the web, into their dashboard metrics.

So now, for instance, if you manage a Twitter account for an ice cream brand you can do a search across Twitter for people talking about ice cream and sort these people by their Klout score or influence. This is extremely helpful because community managers no longer have to spend half their time searching for influencers – now audiences can easily be sorted by Klout score and more time can be spent reaching out to people most likely to help you spread your message.

New HootSuite Features Offer More Insight About Your Customers | Read Write Web

Using the influence scoring algorithm developed by Klout, HootSuite allows users to sort their followers by who has the most influence on Twitter, enabling companies and brands to better prioritize their Twitter conversations.

Klout and HootSuite: when influence becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy | Social Signal

Klout’s newfound, well, influence has landed it a special place in the heart of Twitter web app HootSuite. (By the way, I’ve been using HootSuite heavily for the past few days, and can report it’s amazing.) You can now filter the people you follow so you only see updates from those who surpass a certain Klout threshold.

Top 20 Vancouver Twitter Peeps Based on Klout Score | Kris Krug

Criticize as you may… I don’t post this for any sorta ego stroke but because for power-users of Twitter the data yielded by Klout is fascinating. Who influences you? Who is influenced by you? Which the topics you talk about online do people engage with the most?

I also noticed that Hootsuite just recently added Klout scores next to all users profile information. Useful way to at-a-glance figure out what some is all about.

Klout and the Incalculable Value of Surprising Influencers | Tod Maffin

The recent release of the excellent and free Hootsuite social media dashboard now lets you filter tweets by Klout. In other words, you can see a stream of people who are tweeting about your brand — and can tell Hootsuite to only show those people who are very influential on the Internet. These are the people you should focus on. Invite them to participate as advisory board members. Send them a gift certificate. Invite them to your next staff party.

This screenshot shows one of the Hootsuite columns I run — a search for any time someone mentions my Twitter username, but only people with more than a Klout Influence Score of 39. These are the people who others trust to bring them valuable content. They are paid attention to.

Hootsuite’s Got Klout | Klout

One of the features we particularly like (admittedly, we’re a bit biased) is the new ability to filter by Klout Score. Sometimes you have more mentions and updates than you can possibly keep up with and the only way to keep sane is to filter. Hootsuite allows you to filter by our influence score as well as by keyword.

Twitter Tools: HootSuite Rocks | The First Impressions – Kapil Apshankar

Filter By Influence: The influence word seems to be popping up all too frequently since the last couple of weeks. I had a bunch of posts on the same topic here last week – (Trust + Influence) Exceeds (Fame + Power) In Social Media.

I have been gaining a lot of insight into Twitter behaviors using the Klout index – based on the Klout algorithm. Though there are opponents of the Klout algorithm, and it too has its own set of limitations, this is still a pretty good start that goes a long way in improving my Twitter experience and making it relevant to me.

HootSuite Update Gets You Down with the In Crowd | Marketing Pilgrim

Twitter dashboard HootSuite added a new layer of functionality this week that emphasizes the influencers in your social media crowd and further lays the ground work toward becoming a pay service.

New Hootsuite Has “Klout” | Office Divvy

The popular social media tool to manage Twitter and Facebook status updates, Hootsuite, released their newest version: Hootsuite 5.0.

One interesting feature is “Klout” with twitter-user scores based on Klout.com’s klout-scores, which is the influence metric. It measures overall influence through 25 variables broken into three categories; True Reach, Amplification Score and Network Score.

Bonus: Just a couple more which sort of fit with the others.

HootSuite influence classification according to Twitter users | CNET News Service (Chinese)

Note: You might want to get your translator out for this post in Chinese.

HootSuite For Sourcing | The Source Newsletter

Note: Sourcing is the research part of recruitment industry. “Sourcers” are master web searchers with ability to find *anything* and prove their mettle at conferences with Grandmaster challenges. While Amybeth’s article mostly reviews some other new features, it’s an easy connection to know that influence scores will get you noticed faster when looking for gigs or clients.

Update

Here are a few more posts abot Klout (not HootSuite) to add to the conversation about influence:

Influence is More Than Klout-Deep from The Online Strategy House by Guacira Naves

Social Media: Does Your Klout Really Matter? by Veronica Heringer

More to Come

Expect a few more news round-ups in the coming days while we archive reactions to the releases. As usual, you can grab the full firehose of HootSuite news via the social bookmarks stream and/or by following @hootwatch.

Great Day for Mobile!

Yesterday was a big Social CRM release for HootSuite web, but we didn’t stop there and today have a treat for the mobile users. To go along with Apple’s release of the iPhone 4, we’ve updated an iOS4-ready version of HootSuite for iPhone with a number of new features to help you keep on top of the social media game.

This round of treats includes addition of location-based social game “foursquare,” customizable re-sizing of fonts for easy reading, and updates to iPhone’s iOS4 to allow app switching and performance tweaks. Plus a basket full of preference goodies from RT-style choice to custom avatar sizes.

Check It In

Foursquare is a social game which uses location-based services to keep tabs on your friends, discover your city, and earn points. By being the most frequent visitor to your local coffee shop, pizza joint, you might be anointed “mayor” which can include all sorts of perks.

Get social on the town with these tools:

Check-in and Shout out – Check-in then shout out your current location to your friends on Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook.

Check-ins streams – Find out where all of your foursquare friends have recently checked in so you’re never left out on the fun-times.

Check-in history – Follow your own trail of check-ins and see where you’ve been — ideal for archiving activities for and memory recollections.

Sign-up for a foursquare account to compete for badges and accolades with your friends or share your location on Twitter and Facebook.

Locked and Loaded

HootSuite is ready to go for iPhone 4 and iOS4. This results in performance improvements for iPhone 3G or iPhone 4, including ability to switch apps quickly — if you leave the app, you’ll return right where you left off with no waiting.

Just for You

We listened to your feedback and added more choices in the preferences to allow a customized mobile experience, including:

Re-tweet choice – Choose from Twitter’s native RT style, classic RTs, or both
Font sizing – Change the font size for accessibility and/or convenience
Avatar sizing – Fill the stream with smiling profile pics or minimize for more text space
Username or real name – Select which moniker displays to identify your contacts
Timestamp styles – Display relative or absolute data on timestamps
Auto-enable geotag – Share your location automatically on every update
Photo upload options – Save snaps to the iPhone’s library, plus control the image quality

Wanna change? Adjust preferences as desired starting under the Settings tab.

Pro Tips

Push Notifications with Boxcar — This tool snuck in as part of the last release, but in case you missed it… Connect HootSuite with the Boxcar app (free) for instant push notifications whenever you receive a new @mention or DM.

Instant Ow.ly links in Safari — While you are browsing with Safari and see a tweet-able page, just prepend the url with “owly://” (no quotes) and voila! you’ll pre-populate a HootSuite message with a short link ready send to your network.

On Deck

Suggestions for additional preferences that you’d like to see in a future update? Great! Don’t hesitate to add it to feedback.hootsuite.com. We are constantly looking for ways that we can improve how you compose and converse on-the-go.

HootSuite for iPhone update is available at the iTunes App store in Lite (no-cost) and Full ($2.99 USD) versions. Follow @HootSuiteiPhone for updates. See hootsuite.com/iphone for more details.

Blackberry Notes

Finally, fans of RIM’s Blackberry phones can almost… finally begin Hoot-ing since HootBerry is just about ready for beta release. To get on-board for early access, simply sign up at: http://ow.ly/2aRUx and you’ll be among the first to try the new tool.

Notes:

foursquare is ™ foursquare
Boxcar is ™ Boxcar

This Owl is Social

Another release from HootSuite? Yes, you heard us right. We have called this new release Social Owl and have added even more features to help manage your customer service, relationships, and filter by keyword and influence.

There are already some posts about Social Owl floating around so we thought that we would bring them to you.

Twittercism – HootSuite Adds Influence And Keyword Filters, User Insights And Announces Premium Paid Packages

Shéa Bennett writes: Some new updates from HootSuite today, which already was (in my opinion) the closest thing we have to a perfect Twitter client, and with each upgrade gets that little bit better. These new features – which the company has termed social relationship and support tools - aren’t going to change your world, but they’re welcome and for some users will have value.

Dannybrown.me – Hootsuite Just Took the Lead in Third Party Twitter Apps

Danny Brown writes: The company had already made a substantial update recently, with the introduction of HTML5 compatibility on its Twitter client. This update included site analytics via Google, geo-search options for local tweets, drag-and-drop image uploads and InstaLoad for better performance issues all round. Now, however, it’s upped its game considerably and offers the best Twitter experience for business and personal use.

Svartling – The best Twitter desktop client HootSuite Adds Customer Relationship and Support Tools

Svartling writes this all the way from Sweden: I’ve used Hootsuite for a long time now, and it gets better and better all the time. I’m a bit worried about the coming “premium” features though. Let’s hope the free version still will be good..

Note: Don’t worry about the free version Svartling. HootSuite will continue to be free for about 95% of users while the premium users will enjoy access to some extras like features, high limits and prioritized support — at a thirty price.

Website Magazine - Social Smarts and Hootsuite

Peter A. Prestipino writes: Social media dashboard Hootsuite unveiled some smarter, more social tools which aim to satisfy the blurred lines between marketing, support and technical messaging as Web users increasingly conduct their interactions across multiple channels.

More to Come

We’ll round up more news in the coming days. Don’t blink because there are more announcements coming up. Keep on hooting!

HootSuite is ready to help businesses socially manage campaigns and offer assistance — all from one dashboard.

The line between customer relationship management, technical support and promotional messaging is blurring as customers seek and expect interactions across multiple channels. HootSuite’s newest update adds tools to help learn about your audience and engage them with the information they desire.

Social CRM

Filter by Influence

Drill down into your network by filtering columns by influence score. Sorting by Klout’s algorithmically-produced score allows you to learn which followers and contacts enjoy the widest reach. Ideal for quickly identifying campaign candidates or response priority.

Filter by Keyword

Too many messages to sort through? No problem. Filter your columns on-the-fly by keyword. Type in your desired word to remove the extraneous updates and focus on what’s on your mind. Ideal for tracking topics and prospecting for clients.

Filter columns by influence score or keyword

Follower Insights

Get to know your network with the knowledge behind the “Insights” tab. Learn where your contacts hang-out online including publicly available links to social profiles, a collection of images, even occupations and title — all in one view.

Hoot to Zendesk Support

Where does social networking end and tech support begin? It doesn’t matter since Twitter updates can now become track-able tickets directly in the popular help desk app, Zendesk. This integration helps streamline your customer service and ensure quality responses.

Organization View

Since HootSuite released Team Collaboration tools, many users have added extensive networks. Now managing your colleagues is easier thanks to a new view which shows your contacts on each network, along with a simple way to add more team members.

Organize your teams and networks

Next Up, Premium Paid Packages

From enterprises to start-ups, HootSuite is pleased to help businesses and organizations reach out to spread messages, monitor conversations and track results. As you may know, we’re excited about releasing paid plans in the coming weeks.

Keep in mind, HootSuite will remain free for an estimated 95% of users based on current usage patterns. Meanwhile, premium users will enjoy access to extra features, high limits and prioritized support.

We’ll release details in the coming weeks but to preview, the paid plans will offer:

* Unlimited social networks
* Unlimited RSS feeds
* Team members on social networks
* Advanced analytics & reports
* Expedited support

Thanks to all of you who completed the HootSuite survey — we are committed to offering top quality tools for all types of users and apprecaite your participation.

##

UPDATE

We’ve added an easy way to opt-out of the Insights tool so your data will not be shown within HootSuite. Please follow the steps detailed at: How to Opt-out of Insights.

In brief, click on your personal profile card > choose the Insights tab > click “What’s This?” > click Opt-out > confirm Opt-out — Your data be instantly removed from HootSuite.

Global Owl

HootSuite is truly an international social media dashboard and we love it that way. Why? Because we find fulfillment from seeing the actions and activities of users all over the world who are helping one another learn how to use the social web to spread messages to audiences from anywhere.

We’re working on providing more people a personalized experience in their own language with translation and localization on both iPhone and web versions for HootSuite which is exciting enough to celebrate on your vuvuzela.

While we keep working at our tasks, here’s a fresh news round-up with a sampling of what people are saying about HootSuite in their countries to peruse while you watch the finals of the FIFA World Cup — after which Twitter traffic may even return to “normal.”

The original posts are translated from the native languages using the wonders of Google Translate to give you the gist of what they say.

Let’s get going:

TwitterSmash (Germany) – HootSuite im Unternehmen

HootSuite in the company – This post comes from Germany and the author describes why they have chosen to use HootSuite. They go through the advantages (Vorteile) and disadvantages (Nachteile) of the social media dashboard. Danke for the feedback.

Descary.com (French Canadian) – HootSuite5, l’un des meilleurs tableaux de bord pour réseaux sociaux

HootSuite5, one of the best dashboards for social networks – Benoit Descary is from Montreal and writes that he wasn’t the biggest fan of HootSuite until the introduction of HootSuite5. He goes on to describe many of the new features in the HootSuite5 release and calls HootSuite “a true dashboard for social networks.” Merci Benoit!

Internet Watch (Japanese) – Twitterウェブクライアント「HootSuite」が日本語化、HTML5対応の新機能も

Twitter web client “HootSuite” of Japanese language , HTML5 support new features – Japanese users are excited about the localized version for their language and in this article, they extol the virtues of HTML 5 including “drag and drop” ability and improved performance along with the Japanese-i-fication.

Midia boom (Portuguese) – HootSuite | Nova interface em Html5 e recursos aprimorados para Redes Sociais

HootSuite | New interface and enhanced features in HTML5 for Social Networks – In this post, Chico Montenegro writes about some of the new features such as geo-location and themes from the HootSuite 5 update. We hope this is helpful for HootSuite fans in Brazil.

GeeksRoom (Spanish) – GeeksRoom Review: HOOTSUITE renovado: Lo bueno, lo maluco y lo pésimo

GeeksRoom Review: HootSuite renovated: The good and the bad – In this frank review of the HootSuite 5 update, Eduardo Wheeler writes that he likes the improved profile view, the themes, as well as the not so new scheduling feature.

Eduardo balances the good feedback with the bad and mentions a few other things that he would like to see improved. In the end, Eduardo remains a daily user and recommends HootSuite to professionals managing multiple social media accounts.

elNuevavodia (Spanish) – No dejes que la tecnología te esclavice

Do not let technology enslave you – In this provocatively titled post, Leanne Italie shares life-hacking productivity tips from former Google exec and congnitive scientist Douglas C. Merrill incuding using HootSuit to manage your social interactions so they don’t get out of control and control your day. Not much about HootSuite but interesting nonetheless.

TechVibes – Hootsuite’s Vorsprung durch Technik

Techically written in English but TechVibes’ Jeffery Simpson has some fun with Google Translate in writing about HootSuite’s localization: Forgive Babel Fish’s shoddy German, but it just did not feel right to title a post about the addition of localization support to Twitter manager extraordinaire HootSuite without at least trying to make it multilingual.  Localization support for Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and German joins the previous translation services that the application offered in its last update.

More HootSuite

Remember, you can catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark stream and/or by following @hootwatch for the full firehose feed of media mentions.

June 30th is Social Media Day — some cities have even made an official proclamation — and the folks at Mashable are hosting a barrage of worldwide events to celebrate and educate about the ways social web tools have revolutionized the way we share, communicate and engage with companies, government and friends.

Instead of planning a parade, HootSuite is celebrating with a release with a handful of fixes, tools to make your social media day more socially pleasing.

Tune-ups

In response to all the feedback and enthusiasm to last week’s HootSuite 5 release, we’ve made a few of the new tools a wee bit better — plus thwarted a few anomalies for a better experience.

Facebook Walls and Status: Facebook updates without links will post to both your Facebook Status and Wall, while messages with linked media will post only to your Facebook Wall along with thumbnail (help)

ReTweet Choice: Choosing default ReTweet style is a bit handier now with a pop-up window allowing you to choose whether you prefer “Old Skool” or “Twitter native” style re-broadcasts (help)

Quicker Scheduling: We’ve removed a mouse click from message scheduling — now simply choose the date on the calendar and click the button to queue your message to go anytime (help)

Security Migration

With many networks and services manageable from within HootSuite, information security is of top importance. With this in mind, next time you login to HootSuite, you’ll be migrated to OAuth security which is:

“An open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.”

The process will be largely invisible to you and will make connecting to additional services easier — as well as keeping login information more secure.

Further, this move keeps us in step with Twitter’s evolving security protocols which are changing to OAuth exclusively in the coming days. There should be no action required and your part but we wanted you to know what’s up.

Coming Next

So we’ve knocked the top few most requested features in the Feedback Channel (including Native RTs and Facebook Media previews) and now are working on a few more stellar tools for your arsenal.

Here’s what on tap in the coming weeks:

HootSuite Blackberry — We know you can’t wait and it’s getting close — we’re making it great to be worthy of the Owl and Blackberry’s passionate users

Short Owly Pro URLs — HootSuite’s custom URL shortening service is in secret private beta and working great! Get on the list for your chance to get shorter

HootSuite iPad — Those who bought ‘em, love ‘em and we’re making an all-new tool for Apple’s popular tablet rather than a hacked iPhone or web app

HootSuite iPhone — A batch of new features will make users of the magically translating, updating, statistics-gathering mobile genius machine even happier

Fixes

Life in the browser can get tricky with so many different versions and varieties. As such, a number of anomalies popped up which are now hammered down for better performance (BTW, check out this post about which browsers work best with HootSuite).

These refinements include:

• Search result columns in IE 7 & 8 are no longer mixed up
• Deleted DMs are now completely deleted
• Klout influence scores are now displayed in bios

Help

Some some users have reported veeerrrryyy slow performance — we continuing to monitor these reports and request you first do a hard refresh (CTRL+F5) and then try a different browser for trouble shooting. Still something amiss? Please submit a ticket at the Help Desk after searching for an answer to your conundrum.

We monitor all the mentions of HootSuite on Twitter and tend to the HootSuite Facebook page with great pleasure. However, the best place to go for help is the Help Desk. There are hundreds of articles to both assist you and apprise you of known issues. Still haven’t found what you are looking for? Submit a ticket if there is something we missed.

Feature requests are an important part of our community and tool evolution — we love hearing them but request that you share with others by posting at Feedback Channel. This allow others to vote ideas up and helps us gauge interest in new tools.

This time around, the news round-up finds some new developments in business, partnerships and politics with dispatches from California to the Kremlin (well Washington DC anyhow).

As usual, catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark channel and/or follow @hootwatch for the firehose feed.

Aria Systems – HootSuite Selects Aria Systems to Monetize Twitter and Other Social Media

The folks over at Aria Systems issued a press release via wire and blogpost today talking about impending partnership plans with HootSuite.

HootSuite recognized an opportunity to develop recurring revenue streams for premium features and services that provide additional value on top of HootSuite’s core free client. HootSuite needed a revenue automation platform that supported a “freemium” business model, provided secure payment card handling and immediate service activation for paying customers, as well as automation for downstream billing and collections processes.

Given HootSuite’s historical agility and rapid evolution, the company also recognized that they needed a “future-proof” monetization platform that could enable their current model while providing complete flexibility for the future. Finally, the system had to integrate easily with HootSuite’s backoffice accounting systems. HootSuite chose Aria after reviewing several SaaS billing alternatives.

Great Aria! We look forward to seeing what we can come up with together with the SaaS.

The Atlantic Wire – Twitter Brings White House, Kremlin Together

You probably caught the news of the Russian President’s foray to Silicon Valley to visit entrepreneurs and execs from Google, Apple, and Twitter who helped him set up his own account. Of course, in true diplomatic fashion, the White House replied to the Kremlin’s translated tweet and chose (the Canadian made) HootSuite to deliver the tidings.

On Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev toured the headquarters of Twitter. Besides having a fruitful cultural exchange with Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, he also fired off his first tweet.

You can keep up with both Russian President Medvedev’s English Twitter as well as The Whitehouse Twitter.

The Washington Post – Obama discovers ‘Twitters’ …

Of course each word from the White House is monitored whether by mouth or by web and this Twitter exchange was no exception with the pundits piling on the gaffe. Mixing Twitter and Hooters to get HootSuite? Well, not exactly but we encourage all politicos to use the tool no matter their command of the lexicon.

Twitters? This sounded like either a nervous condition or a cross between Twitter and Hooters. Actually, there already is a cross between Twitter and Hooters: It’s called HootSuite — from which Sharron Angle, the tea party celebrity hoping to dethrone Harry Reid in Nevada, tweeted this on Thursday: “We have now passed Harry Reid in number of Facebook friends on our “sharronforsenate” page! Let’s keep this growing!”

Who says great political oratory is dead?

Confused? This video shows the usually loquacious President Obama fumbling name of the almost-ubigitous micro-update tool for the amusement of geekerati everywhere:

(video)

Video posted by CQblogger

BIV Business Today – Ryan Holmes Profile

Speaking of Presidents, The HootSuite CEO was profiled in Business in Vancouver newspaper in an interesting article about HootSuite’s origins and direction.

Curt Cherewayko writes: The success of Invoke and other ventures on Holmes’ entrepreneurial scoresheet suggests that HootSuite will be another innovative online revenue generator to emerge from the funky work-play space in Gastown that Holmes and the Invoke-HootSuite team call headquarters. {snip}

The company is attaching a “freemium” model to the service in July, which means that users will be still be able to use HootSuite freely but will have to pay for additional bronze, silver and gold standard services offered within it.

“HootSuite has big potential in terms of the amount of traffic it’s pushing,” said Holmes from an Invoke boardroom down the hall from the head office he shares with his dog.

He explained that HootSuite, which manages one million social media accounts for about 400,000 unique users, will try to monetize the 3% to 5% of accounts that are most active.

Those accounts are generally owned by large brands from the media and retail space including Conde Nast, AOL, Banana Republic and Dell.

They use HootSuite to dig up analytics about, and to monitor and add to, the larger conversation in the social networking spheres of Twitter and, more recently, Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Those people are thoroughly entrenched,” said Holmes.

“The free users will either always stay free or they’ll at some point find some features that are worthwhile for them to upgrade to.”

WSJ.com – How Twitter and Facebook Can Get You Better Service At Hotels

The Wall Street Journal shares some tactics for hotels helping guests. In this example, the manager of a Marriott Hotel in Orlando uses HootSuite for real-time monitoring of guest sentiment as well as prospecting for new customers. The nuances of the job are illustrated in this comic strip:

Sarah Nassauer writes: At the Orlando World Center Marriott, Mr. Long and Ms. Pribila track what is said about their 2,000-room hotel every day, and often into the night.

One recent afternoon, Mr. Long peered at the computer in his small windowless office and opened up HootSuite, a program that lets users organize the millions of comments passing through Twitter at any given moment. He scanned the lists he has permanently set up on the software: current guests, past guests, people tweeting about Orlando hotels (so he can send notes to try to drum up business.), people tweeting about his specific hotel, and people tweeting about a conference currently at the resort. He checks HootSuite at least once an hour on his iPhone, often glancing at it while roaming the sprawling resort dotted with palm trees.

Via the hotel’s @TheFrontDesk account on Twitter, he and Ms. Pribila chat with future, current, and past guests. They answer questions and confront complaints. Then Mr. Long moves on to FourSquare, a website where people can use their mobile device to broadcast their physical location to friends, known as “checking in” at a location. “We monitor these people as well,” says the 28-year-old.

Small windowless office? Sounds like Mr. Long needs a room upgrade! PS We’ll be down to visit if summer doesn’t arrive here soon!

More HootSuite

Remember, you keeners can catch all the HootSuite news via the social bookmark channel and/or by following @hootwatch for the full firehose feed.

The HTML 5 Vibe is Alive

After yesterday’s mighty launch of HootSuite 5, this nest of Owls is ready for a weekend of replenishing the fingers and brain. But before we shift to summertime leisure mode, we want to share a few awesome vids, pods and posts made by HootSuite users about the new release.

The Owl loves the attention - photo by @jasonkovacs

Video Fest

The video offerings include 2 versions of instructions about choosing your ReTweet style, a disco-fied review of new features, plus a getting started guide for new HootSuite users.

HootSuite5 & HootSuiteLuv from Nicole Yeary

HTML5 meets HootSuite ~ HootSuite5 smashed it again with incredible updates, of which I couldn’t pick one favorite. So Amazing – You really have to try for yourself, but I wanted to share HootSuite5 from my perspective. *Of course this is not an official HootSuite video

How to change back to “normal” retweets in Hootsuite — 107designs

Along with Hootsuite’s new interface came Twitter web retweets, which I’m not fond of in the least. After I discovered that it was optional, I thought I’d share how to change it back to “normal”. Hope this helps.

New Hootsuite Features on thegrandmamaryshow

Hootsuite 5 came out and it looks fabulous! One vital change you need to make is to change the RT feature and I show you how in this video.

Quick Start Vid

This one is handy for new HootSuite is a great foundation for new users but was released before the update. How to Use HootSuite -– A Quick Start Guide for Beginners by Technically Speaking

More Treats

Seeking audio commentary? Download this podcast:
Generally Speaking Production Network #046 Social Media Serenity

Seeking alpha-geek commentary? Mashable’s your source:
HootSuite Adds New Features and Fresh Interface with HTML5

{Update} Seeking stats knowledge? Evolutionary Designs has a post:
Quick Tip: Learn How to Integrate Google Analytics with Hootsuite5

Seeking a little bit o’ funtimes? Here ya go:
Four of the Most Awesome Hootsuite Updates | expertSEM

1. Blue Steel and Magnum- Way to go with class and choose two of the Derek Zoolander’s mind-alteration, hip gyrating looks.  Points simply for being that cool.  But, beware Hootsuite, “it’s not easy being really really good looking.”
   

More Hoots

For more HootSuite5-specific news from around Inida, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Japan …. well you get the idea … check out the HootSuite social bookmark stream and/or follow @hootwatch for the firehose of coverage.