HootSuite 2.0 is out and it’s boasting a TON of great features. Let’s take a look at what’s new:
The New HootSuite UI
Columns
The most glaring change from the previous version is the addition of columns. Similar to Tweetdeck, you can add new columns to keep track of trending topics, your company’s Twitter account, or organize your Twitter friends (Twiends? Twends?) into groups. You can add a maximum of 3 keywords per column for tracking purposes, and a maximum of 10 columns per tab.
Adding Columns to HootSuite
The initial layout includes the following columns:
- Home Feed
- Mentions
- DM Inbox
- Pending Tweets
- Sent Tweets
You can also re-organize your columns by dragging and dropping them into a preferred order:
Dragging & Dropping Columns in HootSuite
You can also edit columns once they’ve been created, by clicking on the pencil icon at the top of the column, and specifying the type of content that you would like to display.
You can perform a variety of tasks with each tweet, such as favoriting and re-tweeting (or RT’ing for short):
Tweet Tools
Or viewing a tweet’s thread:
Tweet!
Tweet, Expanded (thanks @geekigirl and @zunaid!)
Interested in learning more about a user? Simply click on their name, and a lightbox pops up with all their details:
Twitter User Profile: @malcolmbastien
From there, you can perform various tasks like Direct Messaging, replying, or reporting them as a spammer. We won’t do that though, because we like Malcolm.
Tabs
One feature that we found particularly useful was the ability to add new tabs. Think of it as a blank slate in case your other tabs fill up:
Adding a new tab
Name it, choose the Refresh Rate (handy with the new API limits in place), and voila! You’ve got yourself a shiny new tab to start flowing content into:
New Tab Interface
Adding in new columns can be done as outlined above.
Wrap-Up
From our initial interaction, it appears that HootSuite has delivered an exceptional experience with this upgrade. The new UI is simple to use, clean and flexible.
Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at monitoring your Twitter accounts (traffic, referers and other statistics) and take a peek under the hood of this new version. Stay tuned!
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