HootSuite is a social media communications dashboard often used for online brand management. It publishes to websites such as Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

, Google+

Google+

Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....

, LinkedIn

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...

, Foursquare

Foursquare (service)

Foursquare, stylized as foursquare, is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby...

, MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, and WordPress

WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...

. It also publishes to Flickr

Flickr

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...

, Tumblr

Tumblr

Tumblr is a website and microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. Users can follow other users, or choose to make their tumblelog private. The service emphasizes ease of use. The site ranks as the 10th...

, and YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 via HootSuite Apps. It is also a Twitter client.

History

The service, created by Invoke Media, but later spun off as a separate entity, was founded in November 2008 and launched in December 2008. Version 2 of the client was released on July 31, 2009. The iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

 version of HootSuite was released on December 9, 2009. An Android version of the application also exists.

Service

The service is commonly used to manage online brands and to submit messages to the Twitter microblogging service. Companies and organizations known to use HootSuite include Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, the Obama administration

Presidency of Barack Obama

The Presidency of Barack Obama began at noon EST on January 20, 2009 when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election...

, the New Jersey Devils

New Jersey Devils

The New Jersey Devils are a professional ice hockey team based in Newark, New Jersey, United States. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...

, Martha Stewart Media, SXSW, Zappos, The Gap

Gap (clothing retailer)

The Gap, Inc. is an American clothing and accessories retailer based in San Francisco, California, and founded in 1969 by Donald G. Fisher and Doris F. Fisher. The company has five primary brands: the namesake Gap banner, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta. As of September 2008,...

, LHC

Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It is expected to address some of the most fundamental questions of physics, advancing the understanding of the deepest laws of nature....

 and Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

 (founder of Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

). HootSuite provides a browser-based dashboard that allows users to keep updated on their Twitter account. There are both full and lite versions of the service. HootSuite uses the URL shortener ow.ly to shorten URLs submitted to its service.

Business

The company behind the service is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and its chief executive officer

Chief executive officer

A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

 is Ryan Holmes. Regarding the company's business strategy, HootSuite plans to monetize its service by offering a freemium

Freemium

Freemium is a business model that works by offering a product or service free of charge while charging a premium for advanced features, functionality, or related products and services...

 model, beginning in July 2010, which will allow users to continue using the service for free, but require that they pay for additional features beyond the basic service. As of June 2010, the service manages over one million social media accounts for 400,000 unique users.

The company plans to monetize 3% to 5% of the service's most active accounts, which are generally owned by major brands such as Conde Nast

Condé Nast Publications

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, is a magazine publisher. In the U.S., it produces 18 consumer magazines, including Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, as well as four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps...

, AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

, Banana Republic

Banana Republic

Banana Republic is an American clothing brand founded by Mel and Patricia Ziegler in 1978 as a travel-themed clothing company; it has subsequently largely eliminated this tropical or travel-related theme. The company was bought by Gap in 1983...

, and Dell

Dell

Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...

. The HootSuite company was spun out of Invoke Media in January 2010 after venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firms Blumberg capital

Blumberg capital

Blumberg Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that specializes in providing the Seed or Series A round funding to technology companies in the software, digital and social media, mobile and consumer Internet industries. The company was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in San Francisco...

 and Hearst Interactive Media raised $2 million in financing for the company. Localized versions of HootSuite are available in Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, and 50 more languages are planned to be added. HootSuite's team continues to contact media organizations to help them manage their online brands, by meeting with groups such as Time Inc.

Time Inc.

Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...

 and its subsidiary magazines, including People

People (magazine)

In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

, InStyle, and This Old House

This Old House

This Old House is an American home improvement magazine and television series aired on the American television station Public Broadcasting Service which follows remodeling projects of houses over a number of weeks.-Overview:...

.

Reception

The HootSuite software has won awards from Mashable

Mashable

Mashable is an American news website and Internet news blog founded by Pete Cashmore. The website's primary focus is social media news, but also covers news and developments in mobile, entertainment, online video, business, web development, technology, memes and gadgets...

 at their Open Web Awards 2009, the Canadian New Media Award, the Shorty Awards

Shorty Awards

The Shorty Awards, also known as the Shorties, are an awards event that honors top short-form content creators on the micro-blogging website Twitter. The awards have primarily been sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and are organized by the co-founders of the Brooklyn-based...

, and "Best Twitter app" from Australia's mX newspaper

MX (newspaper)

mX is an Australian free afternoon daily newspaper in the cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, owned and produced by News Limited. Targeted at commuters, its main channels of distribution are inner-city railway stations, tram and bus stops, and major CBD intersections.-Beginnings:The first mX...

.

Competition

HootSuite is competing in a marketplace for social media dashboard tools or platforms, where marketers are focused on social media management for their clients' web engagement activities . The most well known competitors of HootSuite include TweetDeck

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR desktop application for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Foursquare, and MySpace. Like other Twitter applications it interfaces with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles...

 and Seesmic

Seesmic

Seesmic is a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allow users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter....

. Each of the big three dashboards pursues innovation strategies that emulate the most recent feature enhancements of the other two; for example, TweetDeck launched with a desktop application based on the Adobe AIR platform, and eventually Seesmic rolled out its own Desktop version.

Further reading

• "HootSuite for President, Obama that is" at The Vancouver Sun
  The Vancouver Sun
  The Vancouver Sun is a daily newspaper first published in the Canadian province of British Columbia on February 12, 1912. The paper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. It is published six days a week, Monday to Saturday...