Social

This is the first in what I plan to be an ongoing feature on everydayUX: the 3 x 3 review. These will not replace the in-depth, hands-on reviews you would get from a Gizmodo or Engadget but rather more of a quick-hit review laid out as 3 things I love and 3 things I’d change about a particular product or service.

The first product I want to talk about is Hootsuite the self-proclaimed “The Professional Twitter Client”. To set the stage a bit, I have a rather promiscuous history of trying many Twitter clients – Twitteriffic, Tweetie, Brizzly, Echofon, and Tweetdeck, to name a few. I’m hoping to give Nambu a go if I ever get a beta invite.

My favorite, and most-used, of the bunch is Tweetie (by far). I think it’s a near perfect 1 account Twitter client but I’ve started playing the field again for 2 main reasons: 1. Tweetie Desktop development has been stagnant for months (no RT support, no list support) while others continue to iterate and innovate and 2. the crisp + sparse Tweetie UI breaks down a bit once you start trying to manage multiple accounts, which I’m now doing with Tinker Studio. Because of that I’ve started to dip into some of the more “power user” apps like Tweetdeck, Seesmic and Hootsuite. I can unequivocally say after trying Tweetdeck for what seems like the 23rd time, is that there’s something that just doesn’t feel right to me, mostly in terms of UI responsiveness, about Air-based Twitter clients so I ended up at Hootsuite and luckily was immediately impressed.

Hootsuite has a ton of features (multiple accounts, brand managing, statistics, Twitter lists, Facebook pages, mobile apps, etc.) but I’m going to focus on the ones that affect me personally – managing 2 accounts and a Facebook page, posting links, viewing a couple of custom Twitter lists, etc. People looking for tools to enable a team to manage a brand’s entire online presence would most certainly have a different needs and a different take on Hootsuite so please keep that in mind.

3 things I love

1. Performing the primary Twitter actions on multiple accounts is a breeze. The interface and UI is excellent. Setup is easy peasy. Hopping between accounts is great and posting to multiple accounts at once couldn’t be simpler.
2. Interface feels so much more responsive than Air-based competitors. They’ve done one of the best jobs I’ve seen making a web app feel like a native client (thanks to the great Fluid app), something I personally think Adobe Air still struggles with, particularly when it comes to Twitter clients.
3. Slick iPhone app. While the iPhone app isn’t perfect (see #3 in the next list) it just feels really solid and presents some nice UX touches along the way.

3 things I’d fix

1. No support for other URL shorteners. Every link you post via Hootsuite gets shortened with their URL shortner (ow.ly). It’s obvious why they’re doing this – they want the data and they want you to see their bar (see # 2 in this list). These are both decisions that very clearly put their users second, which is never a good idea but wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if it wasn’t for most other major twitter clients taking a more flexible approach to the issue.
2. Let go of my browser! Every ow.ly link takes your unsuspecting friends to a version of the page you’re sharing with the Hootsuite toolbar having hijacked their browser and url bar. If there was a Dante’s Inferno of web chicanery (maybe there should be?), I’d place browser-hijack bars in the second or third circle and judging by my informal Twitter poll last night, I’m not alone. To be fair, Hootsuite is better than most culprits in that they at least give the end user the option to no longer get the bar but I still can’t excuse it. Over the past week I’ve been painstakingly shortening my links with Bit.ly and then pasting them into Hootsuite – both because I have already have a bit.ly account I use with other apps and also because I like and respect my friends and want to keep my hands off their browsers.
3. No Instapaper support in the iPhone version. As someone who consumes a ton of information from a variety of sources on my laptop and iPhone with equal vigor, I’m constantly trying to make my content consumption routine more efficient. Over the past year, the near ubiquity of Instapaper has made it the keystone to that routine and a clearinghouse for my content. I send everything I want to read there as well and make great use of the great custom folder support – i.e. Read Later, follow up, post to everydayux, save to delicious, etc. It’s become so easy to integrate support for Instapaper, you’ll find it in almost all of the popular Twitter clients for the iPhone… but not Hootsuite.

On the bright side, Hootsuite has managed to do a lot of the hard stuff really well. For the most part, my gripes center around deliberate business choices (particularly 1 + 2) they’re making so they might not change any time soon. I will remain optimistic and continue to keep an eye on the product as it evolves.

So what am I going to do? Until there’s Instapaper support on the iPhone client, I’m going to go back to using Tweetie on my phone. When I’m on the laptop, I’m going to continue using Hootsuite until I get tired of the Bit.ly > Hootsuite workaround – which could be soon. The fact that I don’t really have a better multi-account, non Air-based option at this point.

If anyone has any suggestions to resolve any of the issues above or about other clients I should try, let me know. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next episode of 3 x 3 on everydayUX where I tackle the FitBit.

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