Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tweeting in Flocks: Multi-User Twitter Apps Compared
Editor’s Note: We invited Spoke social media wingman, Mark Pannell, to write the following comparison of two of the most-used multi-user, web-based Twitter apps. If you recall, Mark brought his expertise to bear for our ongoing Twitter use survey. We at Spoke have spent time with both platforms reviewed below, but have lived with HootSuite (1.0, and now 2.0) the longest. We encourage you to try both services and let us know if your conclusions match ours.
As Twitter becomes a more popular tool for marketing, CRM, and customer support, organizations are flooding to participate in the conversation. While Twitter provides an outstanding platform for facilitating that interaction, its web interface is not exactly ideal for efficiency. Toggling back and forth between @replies, DM’s, and search results could slow an organization’s usage to a crawl. In a medium built around immediacy, a better set of tools is needed to leverage Twitter for business use.
Two key players have emerged in the race to meet the needs of businesses in the Twittersphere and they couldn’t be more different. CoTweet is the app of choice for heavy-hitters like Ford, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola. Their friendly rival, HootSuite, is used by the likes of Revision3 and the Whitehouse (yes, that Whitehouse). HootSuite’s first foray into this arena offered a host of features that were innovative at the time, but have become commonplace since its release. For the sake of a fair comparison, we’ll be putting CoTweet up against the upcoming HootSuite 2.0 (Beta), which features a more robust set of tools compared to their initial offering.
As different as the user experiences are between these two services, they share some core features. At the very least, one should expect support for multiple Twitter accounts, multiple users, scheduled tweets, and integrated URL-shortening. Check, check, check, and check. Both platforms also allow users to automatically insert their initials at the end of tweets to uniquely identify themselves to readers. CoTweet calls them CoTags. HootSuite calls them Auto-Initials or HooTags. I call them initials.
But that’s where the similarities end. For a pair of web-based services heavily-focused on delivering similar results, they go about it in completely different ways. Let’s take a look at them as standalone entities rather than competitors for a moment.
CoTweet
The most noticeable attribute of CoTweet is its utilitarian design. Like a Madison Ave. maven yammering on his Bluetooth, CoTweet clearly means business. The layout is obviously intended to mimic an email inbox, a familiar environment for most.
The CoTweet dashboard with default skin
The CoTweet dashboard with optional Guy Kawasaki skin (for power users)
From the top panel, a user’s list of available accounts is represented by the associated Twitter profile picture. Hovering over those avatars reveals a list of each account’s users and displays who is “On Duty” (I told you it was all about business). Within a large organization with multiple users, it’s good to have a visual indicator of who is responsible for follow-up at any given time. The On Duty settings can be altered, as well as new users added right from that dropdown list.
A unique feature of CoTweet is the ability to assign tweets as tasks. When paired with the CoTags option, this becomes a powerful tool for CRM. Let’s say a customer had a bad experience and brought his tale of woe to the Twitter community. One of your assigned users spotted the dissatisfied customer within a keyword search relevant to your organization and reached out to him or her to help resolve the situation. If that customer wanted to continue the conversation after the user was no longer on duty, their tweets can be assigned to that initial user for follow up at a later time.
Aside from the ability to distribute “labor” to each of an organization’s assigned Tweeps, the interface isn’t as significant of an improvement over the default Twitter UI as one would expect from such a popular tool. The Inbox, Outbox, And Follow-Up tabs on the left sidebar still require toggling back and forth to access multiple sets of information. The features that appeal to business users make CoTweet evolutionary for organizational use, but not revolutionary.
HootSuite
If CoTweet screams “business,” HootSuite screams “Web 2.0 App.” It’s a little more vibrant, but no less powerful. At first glance, its components appear to be in disarray, but a huge plus for HootSuite is its customizability. The screenshot below is just one example of an unlimited number of layout possibilities.
The HootSuite dashboard
Users can create a tab for each account to which they contribute. Within those tabs, columns can be created for the home feed, @mentions, DM inbox, DM outbox, sent tweets, pending tweets, and favorited tweets. Column options are also available for keyword tracking, search terms, and user groups. All of these can be added and arranged on the fly with the ability to drag and drop nearly everything on the palette. A simple slider is used to resize the columns in real time.
Once customized to a user’s liking, HootSuite offers all of the information that the user wants in one place. Think of it as a more feature-rich, web-based, multi-user TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop. The customization of the experience is far more than a parlor trick. With the ability to stretch an account over multiple tabs, there’s truly no limit to how much information can be made readily-available.
Another big plus for HootSuite is the ability to add an RSS feed to an account from within the dashboard. This allows an organization to auto-tweet blog updates without the need to utilize a third-party service like TwitterFeed. Once you dig into the HootSuite experience and get past the visually stimulating UI, it becomes obvious that the app was built from the ground up around efficiency.
Let The Feathers Fly
As both CoTweet and HootSuite offer a robust set of features which make them appealing for organizational use, personal preference really does become a factor. Some might be turned off by the busy design of HootSuite while others might dislike the minimalistic UI of CoTweet. But beyond the aesthetics of each app, it’s the underlying mechanics that make the difference.
While CoTweet uses the popular bit.ly URL-shortener, HootSuite utilizes their proprietary ow.ly service. The advantage goes to HootSuite here. Although bit.ly does provide a nice collection of analytics, CoTweet requires the user to access a third-party app to view them. HootSuite’s integrated statistics module allows for quick, one-click access to this information. Individual tweet statistics are new for HootSuite 2.0, providing total clicks and user ratings.
It’s also worth mentioning that throughout testing of both apps, I experienced numerous error messages and failures within CoTweet. One error required me to remove my personal Twitter account from the dashboard entirely after changing my password on Twitter. Over the course of the next 48 hours, I was never able to add the account back into the suite without getting an error message. If the CoTweet team had established themselves as actively engaged in the needs of their users, this might be slightly less concerning. But a quick glance at their Twitter profile (with 14,000+ followers) shows a team more focused on boasting their accomplishments than engaging their user base.
I eventually submitted a support request to resolve the issue. Within fifteen minutes, I received notification that they were looking into and attempting to resolve the problem. But after an hour, there was neither a resolution nor any further follow-up. Dog years have a lot in common with social media time and an hour is too long to wait to get an account back up and running.
HootSuite, on the other hand, didn’t error out once during my testing. But that’s not to say that the app doesn’t experience occasional errors. The difference here is that Ryan Holmes and his team at Invoke Media are absolutely dedicated to the satisfaction of their users. With nearly 78,000 followers on Twitter, their profile page shows a company consistently reaching out to users to discuss even the most minor issues. Some of these issues aren’t even specific to HootSuite, but rather to the general Twitter experience.
If someone had asked me to pick a winner based on first impressions before I had any experience with either of these two apps, I would have given CoTweet the nod without any reservation. As the choice of a multitude of large enterprises, CoTweet’s dominance seemed pretty cut and dried. But hands-on experience with both products presented HootSuite as not only a worthy competitor, but superior in many ways.
The accessibility of information and the customizability of how that information is displayed are clearly checks in HootSuite’s column. If the team added the ability to assign tasks/cases similar to CoTweet’s system, HootSuite would be the hands-down winner. As it stands, both services offer time-saving tools which make them a better option than the Twitter web interface, but not by any means perfect solutions. To keep track of who is doing what within a large organization, CoTweet might be the better option. But for sheer efficiency, accessibility, and customization, HootSuite continues to lead the race.
Editor’s Note: On March 2, 2010, CoTweet announced it was being acquired by email marketing software outfit ExactTarget. We’re anxious to see if/how the two firm’s offerings get integrated into a single platform. Congratulations to both companies.
Update: On June 24, 2010, HootSuite announced the release of HootSuite5. The update adds several major features and hundreds of tweaks. We’re so impressed that we splurged (ahem, free download) on a copy of Fluid—a HootSuite deskptop client for Mac.
Bravo, HootSuite. Bravo.
If you enjoyed reading this piece as much as we enjoyed writing you, you might also like: CoTweet vs. HootSuite: Battle of the business Twitter apps
Join the conversation
Nice piece - it seems that the corporate niche for social media is really still in its infancy. There’s definitely an interesting software vacuum when the “premiere” suite being used (cotweet) is that bug-ridden despite being used in such large environments. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how this plays out and how corporations will try to capitalize on the opportunities in the media movements.
@endcycle | 07/29 at 01:12 PM
@endcycle - I would wholeheartedly agree that we’re just at the dawn of the organizational use of social media. But we’ve already seen its successes and failures on a microcosm. Businesses rushing into this space with the intent of making a quick buck off of the “next big thing” are quickly being sent back to the curb with their tails between their legs. Those companies with a passion for their product who are genuinely engaged with their community are the ones who will benefit long-term. But hasn’t that always been the case?
I kind of doubt that my experience with CoTweet mirrors that of the daily use of the big dogs like Ford, Coke, and Starbucks. I think they would have ditched them in a heartbeat if that were the case. But it was my experience nonetheless. We’ll see how it all pans out.
Mark Pannell | 07/29 at 03:14 PM
Mark:
Glad we had a chance to connect in person. Following our convo, I’d like clear up a few items in your post.
You’re right, CoTweet is all business. We’re 100% focused on the needs of people using Twitter for business, whether large or small, for profit or non-profit and across all industries. So far no one else has compared us to “...a Madison Ave. maven yammering on his Bluetooth…” but it’s good to know that our business focus is coming through loud and clear. : )
URL shortening - Like Twitter, we’ve made a strategic decision not to roll our own URL shortener. Instead, we’ve integrated bit.ly, the most popular (and arguably the most trusted) URL shortener in the business and the default URL shortener for Twitter. bit.ly’s real-time stats are unrivaled and we allow users to link their bit.ly accounts with CoTweet. The benefit to our customers is that they can track all of their shortened URLs (including those that they use on Facebook, email, blogs, etc.) in one place. And it’s tightly integrated so we’re still able to offer one-click access to click stats.
CoTags - Yeah, we’ve both got them, but CoTweet deserves the credit for inventing them. We’re really proud of this contribution because we feel it created a way for brands to exist as brands on Twitter, but still communicate as humans. Fortunately, it has taken hold (@twitterapi, @fordfiesta, @bing are just a few examples). Here’s the post from January where we introduced CoTags http://bit.ly/iSlB5. Here’s Hootsuite’s post from yesterday http://bit.ly/pDd7h where they rename them and embrace the standard (including the ^). No credit to us, but that’s OK. It’s enough to get credit from people like Stowe Boyd (here http://bit.ly/16aXjw when we introduced them and here http://bit.ly/iVUlo in his manifesto for Microsyntax.org). Now that Hootsuite’s using them too, it’s just helping to promote a convention that is good for everyone.
Comments about site errors and support - You encountered a known bug that has affected a very small number of users and for which a fix had been planned for release this week. You created a support ticket http://bit.ly/TjDQs which we responded to in 9 minutes. We also sent a note 24 hours later that your issue had been resolved. But you didn’t tweet us. And you didn’t get in touch with us to let us know you were reviewing our site—as you did with Hootsuite. After all that, you made what are frankly pretty unfair statements about our application and lack of engagement with our customers.
The truth is we have been actively engaged with our customers from the beginning and are incredibly responsive to them day and night. We handle support through a different account (@cotweet_support) in order to keep from drowning our followers in support tweets back and forth with individual users. We consider this an emergent best practice. So while it may not be immediately obvious through our @cotweet stream, a simple look in any of our other support channels (@cotweet_support, Zendesk, Get Satisfaction) or a conversation with our customers will give you a completely different perspective.
Look, we all make mistakes. We’re not upset, just setting the record straight. We’ll continue to stay in touch as we move forward.
Thanks,
Jesse
Jesse Engle | 07/29 at 08:06 PM
Jesse -
Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts here. I respect the fact that you’ve chosen to address your concerns with the review in a public forum. That speaks volumes about your dedication to members of the CoTweet community.
The Madison Ave. reference was meant to evoke very business-like imagery. I’m glad you found the underlying humor in that as it was not intended to be critical of your interface.
While I agree that bit.ly <http://bit.ly> is the industry leader in URL-shortening and statistics tracking, the point that I was trying to make was that your competitor chose efficiency within the application over portability. While it’s worth mentioning that ow.ly <http://ow.ly> and their associated Hootlet bookmarklet are also cross-platform solutions, this is not a bit.ly <http://bit.ly> vs. ow.ly <http://ow.ly> discussion. We’re talking about integration within the application. It wasn’t until today that I discovered what you were referring to when you said “one-click access to click stats.” While the full bit.ly <http://bit.ly> stats package is not contained within the CoTweet dashboard interface, I believe you made the best choice for your target user.
As you mentioned, a method of uniquely identifying users within a larger organization puts a more human face on a business account and is a “convention that is good for everyone.” I agree that CoTweet deserves to be recognized for inventing that method. While I was authoring this piece, I didn’t feel that identifying the creator of the tagging system would impact the decisions of the overall readership here. But that certainly wasn’t meant to discount CoTweet’s leadership in forging the standard.
I can understand your concern with the perception that the piece gave of your engagement. After speaking to you at length, my opinion of CoTweet’s dedication to customer service has changed significantly. You’re correct that I didn’t tweet you. Instead, I chose to utilize the support system within the CoTweet application. I think it’s fair to assume that most business users would also default to that method first. As I mentioned in the review, the @CoTweet account didn’t appear to be focused too heavily on support and CRM. It might be beneficial to provide a link to the @CoTweet_Support account on the support.cotweet.com <http://support.cotweet.com> page. I would have utilized that method to contact you. I didn’t notice that account mentioned on the @CoTweet page. But then again, I think it’s safe to assume that most people don’t read the Twitter bios of products they’re already using. While HootSuite maintains all facets of their Twitter presence on one account with 78,000 followers, I can understand why you chose to break support away from your primary stream.
The point that I was trying to make about the support ticket was that even a short period of downtime can be a killer in social media. While there are certainly other options to post to Twitter in the interim, most organizational users aren’t going to be patient or understanding enough to ride out a 24-hour outage. But perhaps you’re right about my attempts to reach both camps for input. Rather than utilizing the “official” channels, I was referred to members of both teams by a mutual friend of both CoTweet and HootSuite. The email addresses that I used to make this contact did not end in either hootsuite.com <http://hootsuite.com> or cotweet.com <http://cotweet.com> . While I was able to reach the HootSuite team, I never asked for their input as I felt that it would be unfair to CoTweet. In other words, they were aware of the review, but never weighed in on it’s content. I would agree that some of the statements made in this review are unfair now that I’ve had the chance to talk to you. But that was my perception at the time and could be the perception of others who don’t have the opportunity to speak to you first.
Within this industry, transparency is crucial. Love him or hate him, Michael Arrington proved that with Twittergate. With that said, I’d like to openly acknowledge that there were some mistakes made on my part throughout the creation of this post. As I transition careers, I’m going to take some lumps and I’m going to take some in public. But I consider myself fortunate that I’m learning them in the company of patient and understanding people like the folks at Spoke and, for that matter, you, Jesse. Again, we’re thrilled that you reached out to us both privately and publicly to weigh in on the review. As we mentioned yesterday, we’re excited to see new developments from you guys in the near future. There’s room enough in this industry for two solid multi-user business applications, and make no mistake, CoTweet and HootSuite are perched miles above the rest.
Best wishes on your continued success.
Mark Pannell | 07/30 at 12:11 PM
I’m fairly new to the twitter craze that’s sweeping the online social whatevers. I’m jacked in the interwebs for at least 90% of my time, and have been since the early 90’s. I’m just a bit behind on what is going on back in the states, being thousand of miles away from home in the mountains of Afghanistan.
I’ve decided to check out HootSuite, and at first I was a bit lost until I upgraded it to 2.0 and then all the features became available. The thing that bothered me about the standard twitter.com page was not having it all right there in front of me. The feed, the replies, my favorites, etc. all were ‘hidden’ to me, but HootSuite takes care of all that for me with the column system. Also, being new to the twitter lingo, HootSuite eliminates the need for knowing all the jargon involved, like #This and @That, are built right in.
HootSuite is a great tool for new and veteran tweets alike. The ability to view multiple profiles at once seems really handy for people managing multiple twitter accounts. As a parent I can see this being an additional way to keep up with what the kids are tweeting about, and who is following them.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 08/31 at 06:03 PM
Doug raises a really great point. We hadn’t considered using HootSuite (or CoTweet for that matter) to monitor kid’s Twitter activities. That would certainly be the way to do it, and you’d also know if they surreptitiously changed their account passwords.
Great suggestion, Doug. Thanks!
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 08/31 at 06:54 PM
@Doug - My four-year-old has a Twitter account. Right now, it’s just me and mommy tweeting on his behalf, but I’m sure he’ll take it over at some point. Using an application like HootSuite to monitor children’s Twitter usage is a great idea.
Mark Pannell | 08/31 at 09:08 PM