HootSuite which is famous as an online based client for social networks has come out with some Mind Blowing features which were awaited by its users, even by me ; from a very long time. Last month even TweetDeck had undergone changes in their design and added some new and cool features. So maybe this is HootSuite’s turn to bring about some changes in its latest edition which is named as “HootSuite 5”.
The sites whole design has been fully re-vamped to give it a more elegant and professional look. This revamp includes the icons, the reduction of the Status Update division when not active inorder to increase the area of the twitter, facebook or any other social network updates and messages. This enables us to have a longer view on the updates as compared to the earlier view which was much shorter and needed a scroll every time in a few minutes or so. Take a look at the screenshot of my HootSuite Dashboard.
Alongside the Revamp it has also introduced themes so that the users can follow their timeline in their choice of colour combinations. Well for the start there are only 3 themes available, but in future there will sure be custom options to design our own dashboard like the way we have in Twitter. So here is the list and picture of the three themes.
- Classic
- Blue Steel
- Magnum
I have for the time being selected Blue Steel since it has the colour combinations of almost similar to facebook and it suits my eyes. Tell which theme you like in the comments section.
HootSuite has now enabled Site Analytics using our own Google Analytics account to show the results inside HootSuite itself so that we don’t need to check it elsewhere and this gives us a complete package of Social Networking and monitoring our sites. This is the feature I loved the most since it makes life easier and faster.
This is another cool feature added up which enables us to search twitter timelines of individuals who are in and around our area. You just need to click the Search Icon then type whatever you need to search in twitter, then just hit the Geo Button to have a GeoSearch. When you search it also offers you an option to save it as a “Stream”, check out the screenshot for more info.
Tip:- For a normal search just hit enter.
Facebook has a system of recognizing URL’s along with the title, description and thumbnail of the page to which the url links to. In a similar way HootSuite has also added such a system to make it easy for facebook users to share their links in an elegant and the facebook way!
Note:- This feature only works when Facebook is selected as the stream to send a status update.
This feature is developed using HTML5 which even Google has started using it in some of its products. Drag n Drop makes life easier, so its certainly a good move. Smartly this time HootSuite has come up with InstaLoad which also works on HTML5 and it promises to decrease the load time by loading it much faster than before. Maybe a combination of InstaLoad and the Revamp will maker the load time faster.
Here is a list of popular browsers which support HTML5
- Firefox 3.6
- Chrome 5
- Safari 5
Well yes, now its time to say bye to the custom RT’s or the old-styled RT’s for which HootSuite was quite famous for and was one of its remarkable features. I frankly used to use HootSuite for the old-Styled RT’s. Now with Hoot 5 it has gone to the newer version of RT’s which Twitter too changed many months ago. Its not at all friendly that way when we have to mention someone or edit the same post. I would Recommend TweetDeck since its the only one now among the famous apps which has retained that feature.
To make sure that people know about HootSuite 5 they have opened a new page to introduce the features, I have covered up most of the points, but you can still check out their page
Update :-
Just read it on a blog that there is a method to activate the old – styled RT’s – Read More.
Wanna know from you guys what do you think of HootSuite 5, it looks promising though..So write in your views regarding this issue whether you like Hoot5 or not using the comments section!