Partnerships and Politics ~ News Roundup
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.
