Plenty going on here at HootSuite HQ but before we lose track, we’re continuing on with the News Round-up catch-up fest with a variety of remarks, reviews, accolades and anecdotes from magazine, websites, vidcast and lists. Enjoy and stay tuned for more announcements coming shortly.

It’s a Good Thing

Min Online (a “Media Industry Newsletter: Covering Magazines for 60 Years”) announced their Best of the Web Award Winners including Tweeter of the Year – Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s eponymous spokeswoman – Martha Stewart.

We mention this because The Martha Show use HootSuite to share musing with their audience and we think that is as tasty as homemade pie.

Here’s a snippet from Min’s article:

Not only is Martha Stewart far and away the magazine industry’s highest profile tweeter, her embrace of the microblogging platform early in its lifecycle helped Twitter itself break out of its niche. If Martha can bake, sew, garden, host a TV show, run a media empire and post multiple tweets a day, then so can the rest of us.

Made for Teams

Sport Marketing 2.0’s sports-centric vidcast, “The Row Show” talked about HootSuite while lounging on couches with laptops/iPads and coffee. After a smattering of interesting tech industry news, they give a comprehensive overview of features of the HootSuite’s web and mobile versions including real-world scenarios about how to utilize the tools with your team – for sports, biz or what have you. They even give a shout-out for the webinars. Thanks guys!

“Essential” Says Mashable

We’re always pleased when the uber-useful blog Mashable mentions us. This time Christina Warren includes HootSuite in a list of 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers:

HootSuite is a great tool not only for managing multiple Twitter accounts (or allowing multiple users access to an account), but also for managing multiple social networks. In November, HootSuite introduced support for LinkedIn and Facebook. HootSuite also now supports WordPress blogs, which works great if you want to have a way to schedule posts and messages to multiple networks. HootSuite also supports alerts and stats tracking. HootSuite is free.

Charted Up

Jamie Beckland wrote a comprehensive review of Twitter tools for businesses in The Four Best Social Media Management Platforms for Corporate Marketers. He compares HootSuite alongside CoTweet, SocialOomph and Spredfast. Under the “good” column, he mentions HootSuite’s “Great team permissions; stream views” and points out it’s best-suited for “cross-departmental teams” in his CC-licensed chart.

Top 10 Robots

Another HootSuite for Android review worth noting comes from Drew Alam of Top10.com in the aptly-named Top 10 Android apps of the year so far, ergo:

Hootsuite is a robust Twitter client for professional users. It allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule tweets in advance and track statistics to measure the success of your tweets.

One of the unique features of this app is that you can create custom streams for specific tags and searches, which will display tweets matching those keywords – making keeping track of important topics a breeze.

Evolving URL Tools

Evolutionary Designs adds their thoughts in Hootsuite Adds New URL Shortener Options:

Although I haven’t had much time to test this new feature, I will be testing this overt he next few days to see if Ow.ly works better and I get more clicks using it now that they removed the social bar from it.

That’ll do for this News Round-up but more in the queue to share in between announcements of the new feature releases and tips and tricks for making the most of HootSuite. Need more HootSuite news? Consider following social bookmarks via Delicious.com/HootSuite and/or @hootwatch.

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A wee bit old but while we’re catching up on News Round-ups over the next few days, here’s an artifact from SXSWi back in March.

This time it’s a video interview with CEO Ryan Holmes with Folk Media. Ryan shares some insider info about how we build and promote HootSuite, the channels we use to spread the brand, and what we measure to gauge success.

Take a look and be sure to answer host Nichole Kelly’s question:

After you watch the video leave a comment below and let us know which category Ryan fits in and why…
1) Houdini – all smoke and mirrors
2) Miami Vice – definitely trendsetting
3) CSI – Crime Scene Investigator – so smart with social media measurement that NOTHING gets by.

Note: I chose 3) CSI cause i know (almost) no mention of “HootSuite” slips by on Twitter, web, or elsewhere thanks to a listening dashboard of feeds which diligently harvests mentions from the outer reaches of the Internet.

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Bangalore, India – May 14, 2010 — InRev Systems, the developer of Buzzom, Buzzom Premium and URL Shortner, NXY, today announced the launch of Buzzom Blog Ads , an advertising platform for blog owners. Blog owners can buy impressions and advertise their blogs in others blogs while the blog owners publishing their content can earn money based on impressions. Buzzom Blog Ads also gives the option of advertising blogs without spending through the Grid option. Blog owners advertise others blogs and earn impressions which they can use later to advertise their blogs in others blogs.

InRev Systems CEO, Bhupendra Khanal feels that the current advertising platforms available in the market don’t address the advertising needs of bloggers effectively and Buzzom Blog Ads is aimed specifically for this set of users.

Most popular advertising platforms work by placing relevant ads related to products or services in blogs and charging advertisers per click. InRev System CMO, Deep Sherchan says that this does not make much marketing sense as good bloggers needn’t make interested customers. So it makes more sense to advertise blogs on blogs as the intent is guaranteed and this was how the idea of Buzzom Blog Ads was born.

Buzzom Blog Ads has the following three sections

Advertisers : A blogger with an intention to advertise is called Advertiser. Advertisers can buy impressions, search for blogs for advertising, look at keywords, alexa statistics to get an idea of the blog and its traffic, look at the content to understand relevance and then send a request for advertising.

Publishers: A blogger with an intention to publish ads on his blog is called Publisher. Publishers get requests from Advertisers for advertising on their blog, can look at keywords for relevance and based on that decide to accept or reject the request for advertising.Publishers earn money for advertising per impression.

Grid: Bloggers advertise others’ blogs on their blogs and earn impressions and use these impressions to advertise their blogs on others’ blogs. Thebest thing about Grid is that the blogger doesn’t need to spend any money yet get more visitors to his blog.

Join the Community Now at http://blogads.buzzom.com/
About InRev Systems:

InRev Systems is the developer of Buzzom and Buzzom Premium, popular tools used for social media marketing especially on twitter.They have been in the social media market, serving customers for more than a year. InRev Systems is also the developer of NXY, an advanced URL shortener which gives click statistics of links.

Many customer service groups, support desks, and collaborative teams depend on social networks as a primary way to manage requests. With HootSuite’s new assignment feature, these teams can ensure all messages are handled quickly and efficiently by the correct personnel. When implemented, these tools will help teams assist customers and clients more quickly, more accurately, and with less redundancy.

Assign-ability

With the new tools, updates are quickly assigned to team members — along with a note if needed — plus responses are tracked for accuracy from a single view. Additionally, teams stay coordinated with shared columns, and responding is even easier with shared Drafts. Teams can share their workload and email updates to others — all without leaving the HootSuite social media dashboard.

Ready to Work

Imagine a scenario where hundreds of messages come in daily via a company’s multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts — some updates are comments or kudos, some are complaints, and others pertain to specific requests or projects. However, the one common trait is that each requires follow-up of some kind. The manager knows that some messages need a specific response, others require further investigation, while others need to be logged for sentiment analysis.

Using HootSuite, the team manager easily assigns the messages to the appropriate team member — perhaps one person manages support requests, another manages complaints, and someone else offers thanks for kind words. The messages are quickly answered by the team, who sees all their assignments in a single view rather than sorting through unfiltered columns and possibly providing redundant responses. Occasionally, a team member knows that a colleague could better handle the request, so she forwards the assignment to him with a explanatory note.

Meanwhile, the team manager keeps an eye on responses to ensure quality and to monitor how the team is performing. The team manager also notices the consistent reply messaging thanks to a shared Draft view, and even takes a moment to forward a few interesting updates to executives via email — all from within HootSuite.

The manager sends a team invitation to a new employee, granting him access to post from a few social network accounts. Starting at the “Launch” button, inviting a new user to the team only takes a moment. The new employee will be up to speed quickly, since columns are now shareable within the team.

The happy manager then sits back to admire the efficiency of the team’s collaboration and realizes these tools provide more time to pursue new initiatives — resulting in happier teams and happier customers.

The best part is, all this is possible and ready to go now using HootSuite.

Social Media Springboard

HootSuite’s new Launch Button puts all your account management and team management tools in one convenient new location. Click Launch Button in the lower-right of your Dashboard to quickly access your account settings, manage your team, view your assignments, drill down into your clickthrough stats, or jump back into your Streams to continue monitoring your brand.

Meet Your New Tools

• Message Assignment — Delegate Twitter and Facebook updates to team members via a pull-down menu
• Message Annotations — Add notes to the assigned messages to provide context or instructions
• Assignment Forwarding — Not the correct department? Re-assign a message to a colleague to ensure accurate reply
• Assignment Tracking — Quick view of a message’s status, including which are resolved, handed-off, or outstanding
• Shared Columns — Collaborate with team members by viewing the same set of columns and messages
• Shared Drafts — Utilize pre-written responses and share with your team to ensure consistency and efficiency
• Forward Updates by Email — Share messages outside of the team by forwarding to anyone by email
• New Launch Button — All options, settings, and tools are available from a single starting place for your convenience

Resources

Media kit: http://blog.hootsuite.com/media
Press release: http://blog.hootsuite.com/hootsuite-adds-assignments

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How many time we come across great sites but don’t share it with our friends just out of laziness. The whole idea of copying the title and link and pasting it in the networking site can be tiresome. Well, we live in the world of tools and super fast solutions. The Buzz button from Buzzom now can update the links on eight social networking sites which are Twitter, Facebook, MySapce, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Yahoo! Buzz and Delicious.

So now you can update your status message right from the address bar of your browser. Buzz button is available for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

To install the add on in your Firefix browser, click here.

To install the add in in your Chrome browser, click here.

First of all, we would like to thank all our users for showing support and patience. Twitter has enabled our system and we will be busy working to fix the issues and bring changes to the interface.

For now, we have few major changes in the system which has become an essential part to exist in the eco-system.

What are the New Changes?

In the new system, you cannot follow or unfollow 50 users automatically at once. You will be shown the list of 20 [corrected] people but you would have to individually follow them. Though if you want to block or lock the users that can be done all in one go (This essentially has nothing to do with Twitter’s User List).

This image above shows you the new elements of Buzzom, Follow Button for each users and Select All | None will only work for Lock.

More information

The changes were made as per the new rules and regulations of Twitter. http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms

Once again, we are thankful to our users.

Yesterday we launched three new feature in Buzzom Premium taking into consideration all your feedback and suggestion.

Multiple Account Management

We understand how painful it can get to manage more than one account. Many of us believe in maintaining separate accounts for personal use, marketing, etc. If you have more than one account, you can now manage all of them at one place using Buzzom Premium.

You can add multiple accounts and connect them with one account. With just one login you will be able to manage all the accounts you have signed up for.

Schedule Status to MySpace and LinkedIn

Along with Twitter and Facebook, now you can schedule status update for MySpace and LinkedIn as well. You now have a better way to connect to a wider network.

Download Reports

Want to analyze your account growth and Tweets? Have to produce a report and want to include a report on Twitter as well? We have a solution for you. Now you can download consolidated reports on your account growth and tweets.

You can choose to have your company logo and disclaimer in the report to make it look more professional. Bet you will earn some brownie points with your superior or client.

Please keep sending those feedback and suggestion. We are listening.

Dear Buzzom Users,

Since April 17th, Saturday, 2010 Buzzom’s system is down and we are really sorry for the inconvenience.  We really want to be open about the case, hence we would like all our users to stay with us till the problem is resolved.

The main reason behind the shutdown of Buzzom’s system is Twitter’s new rules and regulations regarding Autmation. The new rules of Twitter doesn’t allow any automatic following and unfollowing, and there has been many news of twitter users getting suspended for aggressively following and unfollowing.

This case has brought Twitter’s attention to Buzzom which basically allows user to manage their twitter account. Initially, we had a bulk unfollow and follow option which is no longer running. It was removed as requested by Twitter.

But now, our one more feature of following 50 person in one GO has been questioned. As a result, Twitter has stopped responding authentication from Buzzom’s system. We are in close talk with Twitter to restart our service and bring new changes to the system so that it doesn’t violate any terms and conditions.

We have made all the required changes to the system and are eagerly waiting for response from Twitter. Once we get the Green signal, our services will be back on service.

We are indebt to all our users who have showed their interest and love to the service and we continue to serve better in future.

Thank You,

Deep Sherchan

Chief Marketing Officer, InRev Systems

As most of you might have noticed, we had a service breakdown this weekend. Though the root cause of the mishap still remains unknown, we have been successful in putting the service back up. Some of the features such as ‘Schedule Status’ went completely berserk and we deeply regret the inconvenience it might have caused you. Though you might continue to see several schedules updates, they will not be posted as we have stopped the function momentarily.  

We are currently investigating the cause and are also in the process of completely migrating our server. Though you will be able to log into the service, you will not be able to schedule status, send auto DM and grow your network. The migration should complete in a few hours and all the features of Buzzom Premium will be back as before.

We thank you for your support and apologize for the inconvenience.

As promised we are providing a free extension of 15 days to all our premium users. Hope this would help in damage control

Team Buzzom

Thanks for all you feedback. We have implemented the top rated suggestions by you. Here are a few new features available to you:

Live Stats: We have implemented streaming API which would enable you to see your current data. So now all the stats about your Tweets in ‘Tweet Tracker’ will be up to date.

Schedule Status frequency changed to 5 minutes: On popular demand, we have brought down the time interval from 15 mins to 5 mins. So now when you go to ‘Schedule Status’, the drop down for time will be in span of 5 mins.

Schedule Status to Twitter and/or Facebook: Now you can schedule status update to Twitter, Facebook or both by just checking the options in ‘Schedule Status’.

Search and Follow: Also implemented in the ‘Search and Follow’ facility in ‘Manage Network’ using which you can search for people based on their Tweets. After viewing the list, you can decide whether you want to follow themor not.