HootSuite iPhone App Review

Hey hey!

I’ve just (well, last night) downloaded the HootSuite iPhone App to play around with so I thought I’d hit you guys with a bit of a HootSuite iPhone app review.

First up, I’ll give you a bit of a background on HootSuite itself. Hootsuite is a web based aggregation service which allows you to manage all your social networks from one easy to use and great looking web interface. It does look great and has some nice features, including:

• A nice “iGoogle” style dashboard for feed management
• The facility to link up Twitter (HootSuite’s primary fucntion), Facebook (including pages, and the ability to link just to your pages without your main personal profile), LinkedIn and Ping.FM profiles for easy management
• RSS / ATOM feed linking – post a blog and have it auto Tweeted or sent to one of your other social profiles
• Multiple account management
• Twitter statistics – post a link and check the CTR and much more
• Tweet Scheduling – very useful if, like me, you sometime find it hard to Tweet when you need to. Line them up on a morning and watch them go.

I won’t go into a review about the HootSuite web interface as there are plenty of others out there. Let’s just concentrate on the HootSuite iPhone App for now.

I downloaded this for two reasons:

• The stats
• The Tweet scheduling

Spot the owl...

Having previously tried the fantastic Tweetie and equally great, if not a bit heavy TweetDeck I was a bit dubious about another all singing all dancing Twitter client for the iPhone, but the stats and more so, the facility to schedule my Tweets sold me. And for £1.19 I didn’t mind trying it out.

At this point I want to just mention the scheduling of Tweets. I’m in two minds as to how good this is from a Twitter engagement perspective. If you over use this you run the risk, in my eyes, of losing quality followers. People don’t want to see Tweets that are almost not thought out, Tweets that are sent for the sake of it. The still want to see quality so please don’t use this to “spam” the Twitterverse.

Personally, I’ll be lining up some SEO tips on a weekly basis but then Tweeting as normal throughout. I guess I’ll be using it as a bit of a fall back so that if I get busy, I don’t forget to send out my normal SEO Tweets.

How’s that sound?!

I digress…

The HootSuite iPhone app then, pros and cons:

HootSuite iPhone app – The Pros

• Great looking app
• Easy to use interface with customisable “tabs” and a column style layout similar to TweetDeck, if not a little easier to manage in my eyes
• Brilliant way to update multiple Twitter accounts from one place – send the same Tweet to all your accounts
• I do love the scheduling, regardless of my little caveat above I think it is a stunning addition to an iPhone app
• Bargain price at (currently) £1.19

HootSuite iPhone app – The Cons

I hope these will be addressed in future updates but as of time of writing, I have a few little bug bears:

• I hope I’m missing something; unless I set up my columns on the web interface and then import (erase and reset) all my date to the iPhone app I can’t seem to sync up my columns. Please tell me I’m missing something in the comments!
• No facility to update anything except Twitter from the iPhone app. I know it’s a Twitter client but it’s a tad frustrating that I can use the web interface to update my Facebook pages and LinkedIn profile status but can’t do so from the HootSuite iPhone app
• A little one: it’d be nice to be able to click on people’s avatars to view their profile
• Repeat Tweets: it’d be a nice addition if I could set up some repeating Tweets. I send out SEO tips almost daily and it’d be nice to have a suite of, say, 60 tips that I could Tweet automatically every couple of months; one per day. I know that people would abuse this though so I can kind of see why it’s not there. Still, I’d use it and I wouldn’t abuse it so I’ll pitch for it!
• I’d like to see better use of swiping, especially over a Tweet. This is where Tweetie wins; it’s a bind having to go in to every Tweet to favourite it

HootSuite iPhone app review – The Conclusion

Overall, I really really like the HootSuite iPhone app. It does what it says on the tin; whilst it doesn’t do everything it’s big brother on the web does, it’s a brilliant buy for the price and a worthy competitor to the already established Tweetie and TweetDeck families.

Thanks for reading my HootSuite iPhone app review and happy, erm, hooting! (?!)