tirsdag 16. februar 2010

HootSuite upgrades platform, joins crowded social tracking and managing space

Social networking navigation platform HootSuite announced today that it has again decided to expand the functionality of its service to accommodate the growing popularity of social networking by tracking as well as managing social specific campaigns.
HootSuite started as just a navigation tool for Twitter, but quickly spread to additional social networking platforms like Facebook. The company recently announced the addition of LinkedIn and scheduling status updates to be pushed to various social platforms using Ping.fm, a quick way to push an update to all of social networking sites.
HooSuite’s upgraded platform gives users the ability to not only develop and push social messages to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all from one location, but also allows them to gain a better understanding of the audience that the messages are reaching. The company is calling the upgraded features a “Social CRM” tool and says it is targeting marketers, news networks and music labels looking to have a better understanding of its online audience and be able to track multiple campaigns. More specifically, the tool will look at the audiences influence, reach, activity levels and what techniques work best to interact with the social influencers who might follow a company and digest its messages.
The upgraded features also give insight into which messages are resonating best through tracking URLS using Ominture and Google Analytics, analytic tools that can track link usage and give added insight into outreach. Through this, marketers might be able to tweak and update outgoing messaging as well as prep for responses to tracked customer online responses.
HootSuite is entering a well-funded and saturated market of companies offering tracking and managing services. Just last month, social media marketing company Sway landed $2 million to launch its Shoutlet platform to help marketers figure out which social campaigns are working best. In addition, Visible Technologies recently grabbed $22 million in fourth round funding to continue to promote its TruCast platform that’s also helps marketers track and manage social campaigns.
While HootSuite claims its differentiators are features targeted for marketing campaigns used by multiple users across several networks through desktop and mobile applications, the reality is that the majority of the competitors in the space offer the same features, including the recenlty funded companies above.
Based in Vancouver, HootSuite was founded in 2008 by Invoke Media and is used by popular companies such as Dell, Disney, the NBA and FOX, according to its website.

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