HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

Time flies! Already our little mobile Owl has grown one version older as HootSuite for iPhone celebrates version 1.1.6  for both the Full and Lite versions.

But what do you get an Owl for such a big day? Well we all chipped in and gave our feathered friend some shiny new features — which we suspect you’ll be excited about too.

This mobile Owl enjoys making life easier and these new tools will help you be even friendlier.

HootSuite for iPhone -- Now even Friendlier

Contacts are Special

These people we call “followers” are reaching out to learn your thoughts and actions from morning beverage selection to philosophical discourse — now you can get to know these people on the other end of the Twitters with refined “Contact Management” allowing you to search for user to follow.

Tap the all-new Contacts tab on the main menu to quickly search for people and view profiles. Simply type a friend’s name or nickname and HootSuite will find the most relevant person on Twitter. Then you can follow her in just a couple of clicks, plus add to your lists. Try it out and see how much friendlier you become, instantly.

List O’ Rama

“Lists are the new follow,” says Owly. And now, list management is elegantly integrated into the iPhone. Lists are a powerful way to follow just the stuff and people ‘you really, really care about’ in a simplified view. Within the Lists tab, you can:

• Add new lists — public or private
• Manage existing lists — add and remove people
• Modify lists — change names and descriptions
• View lists created (or subscribed to) by others
• Subscribe to lists created by others (even secretly)
• Save lists as a new tab with a quick click
• Read followed lists in a unique tab

Additionally, lists are a way to share the social affection as a sort of endorsement for your Twitter faves.

Bump, Owly Style

No longer must you fiddle with misspelling weird Twitter nicknames, typing at meetings and wasting time! Instead, just “Bump” to follow.

HootSuite for iPhone’s Bump feature has graduated from the Lab and is ready to make adding people to your social networks easier than ever.

Simply “Bump” your iPhones with a your new friend and the little owl will take care of everything else. (Note: Please, don’t get *too* excited and break your phones).

Even Shinier

To impress your eyes, everything in the new version is even shinier for iPhone 4 users –  each graphic from the icons to the interface elements are now in full hi-res so your phone will sparkle as brightly as your retinas will displays.

Custom Touches

Perhaps we are a tiny bit obsessive about making the app perfect for your tastes. Now with a list of new preference settings, you can adjust settings for a custom experience, including:

• Font size from 13 – 20pt
• Avatar size from none to large
• Geotagging — auto on/off
• Photo upload quality + save to library
• Re-tweet style — classic or native
• Timestamp — relative or absolute

Now you can really tune HootSuite to look and act as you’ve always wanted. If something is still missing, it might appear in the next release. Remember you can offer feature requests and encourage your fellow enthusiast to vote it up.

Mayor of Everywhere

It’s important to have a bit of playtime and the popular social-geo-location “check-in” game Foursquare is ready for your leisure time in HootSuite.

Just click the “menu” arrow from the compose box and choose “geo-location” and send your coordinates to your pals.

Whether you are at the pub or the park, your friend will flock towards you — check-in frequently and you’ll earn badges … and you’ll want these badges.

More from the Owls

Owls do manage to sleep occasionally … but all waking hours are spent making this application the fave tool in your app toolbox.

Always be the early bird by following @HootSuiteiPhone for the latest updates and news. And if you have any problems or concerns, visit the fully-loaded Help Desk and/or follow @HootSuiteHelp.

Download from Apple App Store:

HootSuite for iPhone
HootSuite for iPhone Lite

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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

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HootSuite5

HootSuite users will see significant changes to the social media dashboard today beginning with a completely refreshed HTML5 user interface, plus geo-located search, native Twitter ReTweets, and integrated Google Analytics.

HTML5

With the recent announcement of Google’s HTML5 site and many other brands like Apple on-board, HootSuite has made a substantial investment in this new technology standard. HTML5 allows us to release unique features like geo-search and drag & drop, plus improve performance with quicker tabs and streams.

Geo-Searchable

Now, search for tweets by proximity based on geo-location information sent by some (not all) users. Using this HTML 5 powered feature, you can narrow down results to messages sent from your area, wherever you are. This feature will help you learn about local resources, get tips while traveling, and find new customers or followers.

Choose your Theme

Most noticeable is a fully re-imagined dashboard, with more space for updates and an intuitive arrangement for HootSuite’s many features. Additionally, you can now choose a design theme which suits your tastes.

Options include the familiar green & blue “Classic,” the sleek & stunning “Blue Steel,” or the darkly cool “Magnum.” Which one will you choose? Switch at your leisure to find your favorite.

Faces in your Book

Include a photo when you upload a link to Facebook, and then add titles and descriptions to make your update more meaningful and inviting. BTW, this media preview functionality was one of the most requested features on the Feedback Channel.

Another popular request? More keyboard shortcuts. We delivered: SHIFT+ENTER now sends your message to save you another mouse click. Stay tuned for more keyboard shortcuts to come.

New or Ol’school RTs

When Twitter launched, early users created shorthand to define actions and attributes, including @replies for addressing, #hashtags for context, and RT for Re-Tweeting or quoting a message. RT-ing became a powerful way to spread messages beyond users’ local networks.

To standardize the process, Twitter.com added an auto-Re-Tweet functionality, which HootSuite has now integrated. HootSuite users can choose whether to Re-Tweet with initials “RT” or to use the Twitter native auto-Re-Tweet tool.

We can now check this one off the feature request list too.

Google Analytics in Dashboard

Google Analytics users no longer need to switch screens to analyze site traffic and performance because all the data is now available in HootSuite’s dashboard. Using OAuth secure login functionality, you can track conversion to sales, lead generation, or other metrics from your Google Analytics, using advanced URL functions.

Drag it, Drop it, Send it

Quickly attach an image or other file to your social update by dragging directly from the desktop and dropping into the message box — this simple act will auto-upload the file to Ow.ly file sharing and add a pre-shortened link to your message. Then you are ready to send your enhanced note to any of your social networks.

Konnichiwa!

This release also features interface localization in Japanese, allowing more users to enjoy HootSuite in their native language. More linguistic choices are coming soon, to spread the international enjoyment.

Even Faster

The social conversation happens in real-time, so you don’t want to wait for pages and messages to load. Using HTML5 technology, HootSuite engineers tuned performance to make the web application more responsive — including caching to eliminate reloading when a user switches tabs.

This performance upgrade is especially useful for companies managing dozens of social network profiles with large teams of users.

Handier Help

Listening and learning from HootSuite’s userbase is an important part of making decisions which meet the needs of social media marketers and enthusiasts. HootSuite offers assistance via a Help Desk and and gathers opinions via a Feedback Channel. With the new release, these channels are easier to access directly right from the HootSuite dashboard. We invite you to share your ideas, and to enjoy a sense of pride when your requested feature is added to a future release.

Twitter Status

The World Cup football/soccer tournament in South Africa has shown the worldwide popularity of Twitter as fans everywhere document their opinions and the nuances of each match. This popularity is also evidenced in the massive demand on Twitter’s systems especially at gametime. Keep tabs on uptime and performance via Twitter’s status blog and API Status on dev.twitter.com.

Media

Press release with more info about the release and related features and benefits
Media Kit with company descriptions, logos, executive bios and media contact info
News articles social bookmarks of media and blog articles referencing HootSuite

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Built for Socializing

HootSuite adds more tools to the iPhone version of the popular social media dashboard including: instant language translation, geo-location, and Facebook integration plus several key interface enhancements.

With the latest update, you’re still able to manage and monitor multiple Twitter accounts, track keywords and brands, plus explore on-board click-through stats… but we’ve added even more treats.

This release adds the ability to translate Twitter and Facebook messages on the fly — in 50+ languages! Additionally, users can update Facebook accounts, compose Twitter messages in landscape view, share geo-location info, “reply-to-all” with one click, and “Bump™” iPhones to follow one another.

Time for a Holiday

No matter where you’re headed, this Owl will help you stay in touch and informed with instant translation to 50+ languages, geo-location to pinpoint yourself on the globe, and Facebook Profiles and Pages added to the mix — plus a few surprises in the suitcase. With all these new tools, the Owl decided to hop on the plane for a worldwide tour with iPhone in tow.

Check out the new features in action at exotic world locales in this video then get your thumbs on the updated HootSuite for iPhone for a bundle of surprises designed for any quest — from your neighborhood to around the world.

Facebook your Fans

The new release adds Facebook support, allowing you to update your status (in the aforementioned world languages), track your friends’ news updates, and schedule your messages for future publishing. Beyond Facebook Profiles, you can import Facebook Pages from your HootSuite account, and add “likes” to your friends’ posts.

Translate-ability

This Owl is international – Track Twitter conversations from around the world with instant translation to and from over 50 languages — ideal for monitoring relevant topics and brand mentions from global friends and customers. You can also compose in your native language and translate on the go — then post your update to both Twitter and Facebook — makes running international outreach campaigns easy.

Wherever you Go … Geo

Alert the world to your exact location by including geo-location data with your Twitter update. Great for chronicling a trip, remembering a special spot, or for helping friends find you for fun times. Just click a button to pinpoint your location, and your Twitter posts will be tagged with your whereabouts.

Well Groomed Owl

The new HootSuite for iPhone enjoys a freshened interface with large, intuitive buttons, plus a landscape view for composing Twitter updates in a larger, thumb-friendly space. Additionally, you can easily catch up with all the messages since the last time you checked with a “drag and refresh” option, plus quickly populate a message with all recipients using the “Reply to All” option.

Enter the Lab

Seeking a fun way to add followers in person? Dig into HootSuite Labs to try the “Bump™ to follow” feature — to try, just high five another HootSuite-enabled iPhone and you’ll see the chance to follow each other with a confirmation click. Fist pump, low five, freeze frame five — they all work. Enjoy testing this beta feature, no lab coat required.

More:

Press release with screenshots

HootSuite for iPhone page

Time for a Holiday video – features music “The Nostalgic Buffoon” by Jeremiah Jacobs (@jeremiahjacobs)

Note: “Bump” is ™ of Bump Technologies, Inc. http://bu.mp/

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