A post from HootSuite!

Being a geek that I am, as long as I have the internet, I prefer to use my own tools and interfaces, regardless of PC or laptop or even phone that I am using. Thanks to gmail and Google Chrome, I am able to do this. Sure there may be other mail accounts and browser are able to do this, but I got used to gmail and chrome and all of it's extensions. 

For those unfamiliar with what I am talking about, in a nutshell, I have my gmail and Chrome synced together. So as long as the machine (Desktop, laptop, phone etc) that I use has Chrome installed, I can sign in and voilà! I have all my Chrome extensions (similar to you phone's apps, which includes calendars, notes, YouTube  mail, and even games) ready to be used. Pic on the left are some of my extensions. 

Tweetdeck is one of my most used extension. I got news weeks ago saying that Tweetdeck will be retired. Its connection to Facebook and FourSquare has been removed recently, adding to the validity of the news. So I went out to find myself a new Twitter aggregator, and lookie lookie, I found HootSuite!

At first I was sceptical - it's difficult to find extensions that does just what you want it to do. More is welcomed, but then again some of them just go overboard. I also would not like to have to pay for them (typical Malaysian - sue me {that was a joke, please don't sue me} ) yet if they're free, I would not like to be bombarded with adverts. So yeah, finding extensions that fits the requirement can be tough. However, I digress. 

HootSuite has a paid version and a free personal version. The paid version (naturally) offers more features like extensive traffic reports and analytics (bloggers tend to want to keep an eye on this) and what not, but I settled down comfortably with the free personal version. It offers me to connect up to 4 social accounts - I have Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Google+ (still no idea how to utilize this to the max) so far. If you use Wordpress as your blogging client, you can link that as well. As for me, since I use Blogspot, HootSuite allows me to install a Blogspot extention into it so I can have another tab for Blogspot. 

Fuuuhhh... this is probably another long post, but I am certain that you can benefit from using HootSuite like I did. First of all, it is very clean and well designed. No clutter, single place to post to all your connected social network, or just to some that you can select to your liking! You can attach pictures as well, and it will generate a short url should you want to post it to Twitter to save up some of those characters. XD 

Why HootSuite? Why would you want to have Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and all your social network in one browser tab? Simple. Window Asset. I used to have one tab open for each of my social network, and add that with various Googling I normally do on a daily basis for both work and play, I may end up with 10s and 20s tabs open. How about new window? Well that doesn't solve much, does it? More clicking, more alt-tabbing. (yeap, a geek always find the shortest means possible to access anything and everything). 

With HootSuite, I get one tab, and within that one tab, I have another level of tabs for each of my social networks. All streams are in their own respective tabs. I used to have Facebook + FourSquare + Twitter on the same stream. I had to scroll down a lot and end up missing some interesting posts. Having them separated but still in the same place is convenient. I can even have specific columns for specific items - as you can see my Facebook tab has columns for RWMF so I get posts in it at a glace without having to go into the group's page. All the settings and profilings and preferences are placed vertically and minimally on the left side. All in all, a compact, versatile and easy to use extension. 

So if you're like me, a social junkie, lots of social accounts, always on the go, do try HootSuite as a Chrome Extension. If you need clarification, post a comment, I'll help you out - no charge, just satisfaction (please don't take that in the wrong way. seriously. just, don't. >.<) 

HootSuite also has wicked sense of humour. LOL!

PS: One of the shortcoming is that on Blogspot, I don't get all the functions like resizing my images with a single click, justified text allignment, uploading my own image etc. Well, least all the basics are there.

PSS : HootSuite is available on Chrome Extension Store. Also avaliable in Google Play for Android devices.