HootSuite blog – Social Media Dashboard

We’ve added new features, and we think you’ll like them. Some features were the result of your requests. Others were added because they’re just darn cool.

Twitter Lists

Many of you have been asking HootSuite to implement Twitter lists, and we’ve been listening. Not only can you import the lists you’ve already created, you can create your own lists using HootSuite. These lists can be be saved as a column. You can further modify your lists (and who’s on them) using your column preferences.

Facebook and LinkedIn

We’ve decided to push HootSuite functionality beyond Twitter. You can now integrate your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. Whereas before you could update Facebook and LinkedIn through Ping.fm functionality, things are different now. Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are treated similarly to Twitter accounts: you can create columns from these social networks, read your friends’ status updates, and update multiple Facebook accounts. Facebook integration offers in-line commenting.

Scheduled Facebook and Linkedin Status Updates

If you are a regular HootSuite user, you’ve probably tried scheduling your tweets. We’ve extended this capability further: HootSuite users can now schedule their status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ping.fm. The ability to schedule Ping.fm updates is particularly noteworthy since through it you can update most popular social networks (such as MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.) Scheduling status updates now has near universal applicability.

For help with using HootSuite, please visit our customer service area at http://feedback.hootsuite.com

customer service, features, hootsuite news, update Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Online Communities, ping.fm, Social network, Twitter

You asked for it… and here it is: We just introduced Ping.fm integration on HootSuite.com.

What’s Ping.fm? Think of it as your social network glue.

A Ping.fm account lets you send a single update to multiple networks simultaneously: Facebook, Wordpress, MySpace, LinkedIn, and more. And now you’re able to send those updates through HootSuite to take advantage of scheduling, clickthrough stats, and all the sweet goodness HootSuite has to offer.

Here’s how it works:

1) Sign up for Ping.fm:

2) Hook all your social networks up to Ping.fm:

(Don’t worry about adding your Twitter account to Ping.fm — HootSuite will handle your Twitter updates.)

3) Add some custom triggers to Ping.fm, if you like.

Triggers let you specify a subset of social network accounts that you’d like to post to. For example, you could create a trigger called “status” and have that trigger only send updates to Facebook and GTalk, for example.


4) In HootSuite, as an admin, click on “Settings.” At the bottom of the “Account” tab, you’ll see a Ping.fm section.


5) Paste in your application key, and add a trigger if you like. (If you leave the trigger field blank, it’ll try to send to all your Ping.fm networks.)

6) Choose which Twitter profiles should send data to Ping.fm.

…And that’s it! Any tweets sent from the selected Twitter profiles will be sent to Ping.fm.

This is an early release of this feature, and we’re super excited about the possibilities.

A few things to be aware of:

* DMs are not sent to Ping.fm. Any tweets starting with “d username” or “dm username” are considered DMs.

* Any RSS feeds you’ve set up in HootSuite will not be sent to Ping.fm. This helps us avoid issues where a Ping.fm-enabled blog is linked via RSS to HootSuite, which sends to Ping.fm, which sends to HootSuite… eventually destroying the Internet.

* Your tweets are sent to Twitter by HootSuite, then sent to Ping.fm. If you have your Twitter account linked to Ping.fm, don’t worry — we won’t send to any Twitter accounts linked through Ping.fm. This helps avoid duplicate postings.

* We’re not currently parsing the tweet itself for triggers. Ping.fm’s API requires triggers and message text sent separately. Rather than worry about parsing on our end, you’ll need to set up a trigger through the Settings page if you want to use one.

We’ve already got some ideas about how we might improve Ping.fm integration… here are a few things we’re considering:

1. Allowing you to select a trigger for each tweet — so you can more easily control where your messages are going on a per-tweet basis.
2. Allowing you to set up multiple Ping.fm keys (for example, if certain Twitter profiles should send updates to one Ping.fm account, and others should send updates to another).
3. More-better-izing. =)

Your feedback is, as always, much appreciated!

Twitter, features, hootsuite news, social media hootsuite news, ping.fm