HootSuite – Social Media Dashboard
HootSuite is based in Vancouver, led by CEO Ryan Holmes. The company was co-founded by David Tedman and Dario Meli. Their 50 word company description from their media kit is, “HootSuite allows organizations to use social web tools to schedule and publish messages to multiple social networks, monitor results and efficiently participate in conversations. Since Dec. 2008, HootSuite has earned awards from Open Web, CNMA, and Shortys and users include The White House, Martha Stewart Ominmedia, SXSW and Zappos.” Below you can watch HootSuite’s YouTube video tour or see a screenshot of more of their users.
HootSuite announced $1.9M in Series A funding on January 12, 2010 from Blumberg Capital, Hearst Interactive Media, Geoff Entress, and Social Concepts.
The funding was well worth it, as HootSuite has many awesome features! The site allows you to have flexibility with your layout, as soon as you have configured to your liking the interface is easy to use. One of the best features for a business is the ability to see who’s following you and see their Klout score. This way you are able to see the influence and reach your social media updates have on your followers. You can take your most important followers and put them in their own separate list. HootSuite also allows you to track your statistics, which is great for a business to be able to measure their influence. You can schedule updates, so your updates are spread out and don’t feel to spam-y.
I had a problem with the “mentions” section. I wanted to track mentions of our company, “Open-First,” but it basically only searches for “open first” as a statement, not specifically with the hyphen. Since “open first” is a pretty common phrase it would be impossible to use to track our company.
HootSuite’s many other great features that can be found here.
There is a version for $5.99/month or a free version. I downloaded the free version to test the platform, but the paid version would be beneficial if your were tracking the social media of your company because of the added stats tracking and unlimited networks. It also allows you to add an additional user.
You can run the free and paid platform from both an iPhone or Android device. Using Chrome, Prism, or Fluid HootSuite you can run it directly from your desktop. Hootlet is a button that can be installed and automatically, the URL is shortened and text is grabbed from the site. Details here.
HootSuite’s platform and layout is very much like TweetDeck. You can read Marissa’s post about the company on this blog.
You can follow HootSuite on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, del.icio.us feed, or the company blog.
UPDATE 10/27/10: For more information on Hootsuite please visit -
