No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke, it’s true that HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes will share knowledge with mobile developers and aspiring entrepreneurs in Vancouver when he speaks at the iPhone and Social Media meetup on April 1 at the Guinness Tower in Vancouver.
Be sure to attend if you are interested in hearing Ryan talk about the HootSuite mobile launch for the iPhone and Android platforms including the backstory behind the promotional campaign behind the launch.
Date/Time: April 1, 2010 at 6pm
Location: Guinness Tower – Presentation Room
1055 West Hastings St., Vancouver, BC
Ryan Holmes will be speaking about a case study of the mobile launch rollout of HootSuite for iPhone and Android. He will review how they lined up their launch to get maximum exposure, and achieve the 1st place rank in their application category in the app store, 13th place in Canada, 18th place in Japan, and 34th in the US app store for the month of December.
Also, Aaron Hilton (CEO of CellMap, Inc.) will offer his thoughts on Key Value Observing, and a speedy way of using NSPredicates to crunch your data.
The F5 Expo is coming up on April 7th in Vancouver at the (new grass-roofed) classic Canada Place Convention Centre and features a keynote by renowned thinker (and Canadian) MalcolmGladwell (@gladwell) along with a trade show and variety of panels.
HootSuite is participating in a few different capacities – from panels to photo opps – and invite you to join in the fun at the Trade Show with a complimentary ticket.
Fistful of Tickets
We have a stash of tradeshow passes to give away to people who get in touch by raise their hand. Just send a Twitter note to HootSuite Community Wrangler @daveohoots. While these tickets won’t get you into see Mr. Gladwell’s remarks, there is plenty of fun on the floor too.
Be the Feed
HootSuite is an F5 media sponsor so you’ll see our familiar dashboard on the presentation screen streaming all of the #F5Expo tagged Tweets – including yours. Plus look for the sign with the unique #hashtag for each panel to participate in the “back channel” conversation.
Twitter for Biz
HootSuite is hosting 4 Twitter for Business panels starting at 10am and lasting approximately 15 minutes each. The panels will feature local experts (including the HootSuite and Invoke crew) and will focus on Twitter for Business.
Blurb: Whether you’re already on the Twitter bandwagon or you see it as merely the latest trend, recognizing the impact of microblogging on business is important. Trends in this area are quickly emerging and evolving. For example, companies are now paying high ranking twitter members to talk about them. It’s a turn (perhaps for the worst) in social media campaigns. Stay in the know by learning about new twitter trends and the impact they could have on your business. More importantly, get to know some basic rules that will help you build a loyal following.
The Owl has been known to cavort with celebs like Wyclef Jean and MC Hammer – yup, a *very* big deal. So fly by Booth 108 for your chance to schmoooze with the elusive Owl.
Sometimes the best way to learn is from others’ mistakes
Participate in an intriguing discussion on start-ups that have failed. Did you know that companies like Apple had several flops before they got it right? or that web tv was first bought by Microsoft in 1997 and failed? However, web tv, today, is on an upward trend towards mass adoption. This exemplifies that failure doesn’t always reflect the end of an idea.
Attend this dynamic session to uncover the critical components of timing, as well as learning the difference between when to give up and when to push harder.
Experience comes from a series of overcoming bad decisions and sometimes timing is everything.
Phone it in
To keep up with the F5 schedule on the go with the F5 Expo iPhone app. Gratis.
The HootSuite crew was on the road for the past couple weeks in support of our beloved media dashboard. Stops included the 140 Twitter Conference in Seattle, SXSWi in Austin, and Sprout Up in Toronto.
Along the way, we made lots of new friends, shared plenty of interesting conversations, and listened to great feedback from enthusiastic users. Thanks to all who helped us along our journey and made us feel welcome in their cities.
While on the road, we kept an eye on what folks were saying and several articles caught our eye. Settle in and take a look at a sample (for more HootSuite coverage, follow the social bookmark stream):
Today at the #140tc Twitter Conference in Seattle, Washington (which I keynoted this morning), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes announced that its popular Twitter application will be integrating with both MySpace and Foursquare, starting this week at the South by Southwest Interactive conference.
While Mr. Holmes didn’t divulge many details about the MySpace and Foursquare integrations, we can make some educated guesses as to how they will work. MySpace integration will most likely look the same as it does in Tweedeck: You’ll gain access to your MySpace feed and gain the ability to update your MySpace status.
Wow 1386 Retweets (so far)! Speaking of Mashable, here’s HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes and Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore later at SXSW.
Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Ryan Holmes of HootSuite at SXSW - photo by John Biehler
Ryan Holmes hasn’t always been a web entrepreneur. The founder of popular Twitter client and social media dashboard Hootsuite may be a web guy now, but he started out with something very offline: paintball. He started a paintball company, which is still thriving and is run by his brother today. He then moved on to another offline business, pizza, when he opened and owned a restaurant.
He finally moved into the web space when he founded full-service interactive agency Invoke in 2005. The agency focuses on building brand advocacy through social media tools – one of those tools that the team developed is Hootsuite, which launched in 2008 and just announced the finalization of $1.9 million in venture funding.
Hootsuite is more than a twitter client. In the video below, I’ll go over why I love Hootsuite so much and how I leverage it to not only update all my statuses on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but to also keep track of click throughs and trends.
SXSW is here. If you’re not a HootSuite fan, you may want to become one if you’re attending the interactive media, film, and music conference in Austin, TX March 12 – 21, 2010.The creative geniuses at HootSuite have added FourSquare and MySpace to the dashboard just in time for SXSW. HootSuite is a popular application that help manage multiple social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Wordpress.com.
Thanks for spreading the word Cheryl! To prove we were at SXSW, here’s a photo of some of the HootSuite tribe @ SXSW. Yup, sunny days require cool hats and shades .
HootSuite tribe in Austin - @d1337 @daveohoots @quikness - photo by @kk
One great thing I like about this site is the endless topics of slideshows. Take this great slideshow for example, which is a tutorial on managing multiple twitter profiles on Hootsuite. Last week in our PRowl meeting, we talked about managing social media and sites we enjoyed using. Hootsuite was a site some of our members used (I personally use it too), which allows scheduled tweets, as well as organizing multiple social media accounts (like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) all so they are easily and simultaneously accessible.
Social media can be a huge waste of time if done incorrectly. Tweeting, staying abreast of others’ tweets, it can suck away a lot of your valuable time. So what do you do? How do you make sure your Twittering doesn’t take over your whole business or non-profit?
Now there is HootSuite. “The Professional Twitter Client,” HootSuite has many pros that will help you keep the amount of time you spend on social media under control.
Visit the post to get the reasons and some great tips. BTW, we’ll be sharing more Twitter tips for business at the F5 Expo on April 7th in Vancouver – more info to follow.
Enough Hoots for Today
That’s a wrap for now. Keep the blogs and Twitters coming plus keep an eye out for an interview with CEO Ryan Holmes in Techvibes Toronto by @karimkanji. Here’s one more pic for the road – this one from the HootSuite breakfast in Toronto with a remarkable group of folks sharing ideas and conversations over bacon and coffee.
While HootSuite is the social media tool of choice for many huge enterprises, governments, and NGO/NPOs, even more users are running small and medium businesses.
Our suggestions included the exceptionally hip shoemaker based in Vancouver, John Fluevog – known for their mix of urban sophistication, old world craftsmanship and artful whimsy as well as razor smart copywriting and a new temple to shoes and design in their Vancouver HQ in the historic Gastown district which made of glass covering between two brick buildings.
John Fluevog store by Purple Monkey
In Sarah Needleman’s March 15th article Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media – several of the interviewees were experiencing the results they sought from social marketing as reflected in the subtitle: Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’.
However, Stephen Bailey shared some growth figures and related tactics Fluevog uses to drive traffic and conversions. Here’s a snippet the article – and whether you are into SMB marketing or leather footwear, consider following @fluevog.
Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.
“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.
As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.
Greetings from Driftwood Texas - photo by @johnbiehler
After a hugely successful and enjoyable week at SXSWi (which deserves a mighty recap/roundup of its own), HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes is T.O. bound to speak at Sprouter on Wednesday, March 24th 2010 6pm at The Pilot, 22 Cumberland St. Toronto.
While in town, Ryan and I (Dave Olson Marketing/Community Director) seek to meet TorontoLand customers, entrepreneurs, media and tech luminaries to talk about what they need to spread messages, build audience and track results.
Want to meet up? Ping me @daveohoots to arrange a time for a conversation.
The Sprouter Toronto event looks fantastic and has a huge audience already RSVP’ed. Here’s the blurb to give you a flavor:
Sprout Up is a free monthly event for forward-thinking Toronto area entrepreneurs to gather and mind-meld. A great chance for startups around the city to get friendly, discuss current trends, and network in a casual, open, and focused setting. Attendees will walk away with new insights, new friends and actionable ideas for their businesses.
Join us on March 24th for the next Sprout Up! We have a special guest flying in from Vancouver for the event – guest speaker Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO of professional Twitter client Hootsuite. Ryan will be talking about his journey as a serial entrepreneur (from founder of a paintball field to tech startup CEO). You’ll also hear from new local startups about their businesses.
Last week, HootSuite released a version for Android – Google’s open mobile platform. It turned out so well that now HootSuite has acquired the company behind the development of this Twitter client – Swift App.
This acquisition is indicative of HootSuite’s support of this open source platform which is now available on dozens of different handsets by manufacturers organized under the Open Handset Alliance.
Swift App was helmed by ace mobile developer Sebastian Delmot @sd who will assist HootSuite in further development as a mobile adviser. He previewed the news to his band of enthusiastic followers saying:
Plus he celebrated the released by issuing a “Cute Alert” for the”Robots Need Love” video featuring music by @DanManganMusic and assured his followers that his the app is in good hands.
Android Flashback
Like HootSuite iPhone, HootSuite Android features multiple Twitter accounts, message scheduling, realtime search, keyword tracking and on-board statistics in the Full version. HootSuite will continue to evolve the app with Facebook integration on the docket.
You likely caught the Android/iPhone “Pygmy Owl” release news roundup post with dozens of pundits chiming in about the release including Mashable, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Leo Laporte, Robert Scoble, and ReadWriteWeb, along with dozens more including many Android specific news outlets (see even more via the HootSuite Delicious stream).
Know your Robots
The Android open source mobile platform is now available on handsets from a variety of manufacturers members of the Open Handset Alliance who have produced phones such as the Motorola Droid or Google’s own Nexus One manufactured by HTC. The software is open source under an Apache license meaning that vendors can add proprietary extensions without submitting those back to the open source community.
In case you aren’t overwhelmed by all the news coming from HootSuite HQ – including Foursqaure and MySpace launch – here’s a dossier of info and articles about the Android mobile platform plus discussion about industry trends and market share:
“The Android app from HootSuite is significant, however, as it expands the company’s reach and validates the launching of multiple versions of a single mobile app. As Google’s mobile platform, Android continues to gain market share, and offer itself as a viable alternative to the iTunes App Store. With adoption for Android devices increasing, so too does the need to have a single mobile app on multiple mobile platforms.”
“Desktop Twitter client HootSuite has made the jump to mobile with a new app for Android. It seems Android Twitter apps are born faster than the average American birth rate, but HootSuite has the brand recognition to carve its own lane as “the professional Twitter client” geared towards people who need analytics and other business-centered features.”
In October, 2009, Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012, Android would become the world’s second most popular smartphone platform, behind only the Symbian OS, which powers Nokia phones and is very popular outside the US. Meanwhile, BlackBerry would fall from 2nd to 5th place, iPhone would remain in 3rd place, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile would remain in 4th place.[90] Taiwan’s Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC) predicted that in 2013, 31.8 million Android phones and 126 million Android-based portable products would ship.[91]
Analytics firm Flurry estimates that 250,000 Motorola Droid phones were sold in the United States during the phone’s first week in stores.[92]
“In the last month the iPhone has lost 3.2% of its marketshare compared with RIM and Android both gaining considerably. This isn’t just a monthly blip either, at least with regards to Android. Google’s phone market has grown 44% over the past quarter and almost doubled over the past year while the iPhone has lost around 5% and 10% of the overall market over those same periods.”
Just in time for SXSW, social butterflies can share favorite hot-spots with friends on Foursquare, plus bands and filmmakers can quickly connect with fans on MySpace – all from HootSuite’s Social Media Dashboard.
Mayor of the Nest
Don’t know about Foursquare? This web juggernaut combines way-finding, social marketing and gaming in an addictive mobile app which encourages everyday socialites to “check in” at cafes, pubs, and conferences. They can alert friends, share tips, and even become “mayor” of a location. Note: CEO Ryan loves it.
Bands, Meet Fans
Of course, you know MySpace. The venerable web giant is the place where creative types hang out and share their work and is the first stop for discovering emerging and established bands and filmmakers. With HootSuite, artists can easily outreach to fans about shows, releases and screenings. P.S. Let’s be MySpace friends.
Tools for Marketers
Today’s release includes a powerful addition of default settings to custom URL parameters which were added in HootSuite’s “Barn Owl” release (Feb. 15, 2010). This feature helps marketing and customer service teams track campaign results by adding unique referral identifiers. The release also includes a variety of bug fixes and performance enhancements.
Bar-B-Q and Apps in Austin
Are you headed to Austin for the massive interactive media, film, and music conference? The HootSuite team will be on-the-ground keeping an eye out for users updating Foursquare and MySpace with HootSuite and sharing swag specifically designed for the culture of the conference.
Track us down on the road by following @HootUp and/or the #hootsxsw hashtag, plus this handy SXSW Twitter list, for meet-ups, demos, prizes and photo ops with the Owl mascot.
You don’t have to be on the ground in Texas to enjoy the fun – just add Foursquare and MySpace to your HootSuite social networks and learn locals-only tips and/or find where your favorite band is playing next – right from your beloved dashboard.
As he usually does, Robert visited local tech companies to shoot video of the remarkable work happening behind the scenes. He popped by HootSuite HQ after hours for a conversation with ace iPhone developer Richerd Chan about the features and development path of the iPhone and Android apps, plus digs deep about industry evolution trends with CEO Ryan Holmes including discourse on molecular structure and sentiment analysis – plus the backstory behind the crowd-sourced name (thanks again @mattnathan).
Blurb: Hootsuite is a new corporate client for Twitter that lets multiple users share one account, among other things. Here you see the latest Hootsuite client for iPhone demoed and we talk about the corporate Twitter client market.
More: He also visited BootupLabs and wrote a compelling article about the changes in entrepreneurial culture and the emergence of the worldwide startup.
The world is full of happier robots today as thousands of Android and iPhone users downloaded the full and lite HootSuite apps – plus dozens of you took the time to review, respond and engage with us to share opinions and props.
Here’s a recap of the some/most of the articles we found, plus a treat at the bottom for those of you who enjoyed the Robots song and/or the Olympic beat poet.
Converse and compose on the go with HootSuite for Android and iPhone – in Full or Lite versions
Despite worldwide adoration, the HootSuite iPhone App seemed a bit lonely. So the thoughtful developers went back to the factory to build more robots including HootSuite for Android. In fact, they had so much fun, they made Lite (free) robots too.
With 4 versions to choose from, HootSuite is now a big, happy, mobile robot family.
Android + iPhone = HootSuite Mobile Love
Now Google Android device users can enjoy the fun Apple iPhone users rave about, including:
Managing multiple identities and accounts
Creating custom views for tags and searches
Understanding reasons for trending topics
Scheduling messages for the future
Adding followers to lists and accounts
Sharing photos and shortening URLs
Already using HootSuite on the web? Tight integration means a single import gets you rolling so you are synced up on-the-go, and at your desk, with help from a powerful wizard.
Cheap or Free – your choice
Simple, elegant and powerful, HootSuite for Android and iPhone are available in Lite version at no cost from the Android Market and Apple App Store respectively. Yes, gratis, put your checkbook away – free. We knew you’d like that.
Need more power? No problem. The full-featured versions allow as many accounts as you desire (Lite is limited to 3) plus on-board click-through statistics tracking to see what’s working in (almost) realtime.
Plus HootSuite Android version includes a few new tricks including background notifications so messages keep on coming even when you browsing elsewhere – Better to let the robots do your work, right?
Go Sideways with Facebook
Current HootSuite iPhone customers will be first to get their fingers on App version 1.2 which includes two highly-requested additions: Facebook integration and landscape view – allowing you to enjoy your friends’ musing and snapshots in full splendor – and it’s just around the corner. Of course, HootSuite iPhone also works for iPod Touch.
Recap the Robot Family
HootSuite for Android – $1.99 from Android Market – includes stats and unlimited accounts
HootSuite for Android Lite – free from Android Market – limited to 3 accounts
HootSuite for iPhone – $1.99 from Apple App Store – includes stats and unlimited accounts
HootSuite for iPhone Lite – free from Apple App Store – limited to 3 accounts
Scan the QR Code with your Android powered handset to find HootSuite in the Android Market:
Etc.
HootSuite™ is a trademark of HootSuite Media, Inc.
Android™ is a trademark of Google Inc. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions.
iPhone® and iPod touch® are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Date/Time:
.
Last week, HootSuite released a version for Android – Google’s open mobile platform. It turned out so well that now HootSuite has acquired the company behind the development of this Twitter client – Swift App.
“The Android app from HootSuite is significant, however, as it expands the company’s reach and validates the launching of multiple versions of a single mobile app. As Google’s mobile platform, Android continues to gain market share, and offer itself as a viable alternative to the iTunes App Store. With adoption for Android devices increasing, so too does the need to have a single mobile app on multiple mobile platforms.”
Simple, elegant and powerful, HootSuite for Android and iPhone are available in Lite version at no cost from the Android Market and Apple App Store respectively. Yes, gratis, put your checkbook away – free. We knew you’d like that.
Go Sideways with Facebook
