HootSuite Vs TweetDeck

 

 

We received an assignment this year, which required us to create profiles on various social media platforms. In the brief these two handy tools were mentioned. I was not familiar with it and was not too sure which one to choose. After conducting a bit of research, I found Hootsuite to match my needs. I downloaded it and found a whole new convenient way of monitoring my various platforms.

 For those that are indecisive, hope you are able to decide after reading this post.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is a dashboard application meant for the organization of social media accounts, designed particularly for brand management. It was created by a programmer named Ryan Holes in 2008. After realizing his need for, and the market’s noticeable lack of, a tool to manage his various social media accounts and profiles, Holmes decided to create his own. The result was Hootsuite, which allows integration with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, WordPress, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Mixi, Trenspottr, and Google+ right in your internet browser.

What is Tweetdeck? 

Tweetdeck came before Hootsuite by a couple months. If you’re wondering why Holmes, the creator of Hootsuite, didn’t just install Tweetdeck before going and creating his own tool, it’s because Tweetdeck has one notable disadvantage against Hootsuite right off the bat: it can only integrate with the social media network Twitter. As its name might suggest, Tweetdeck is Twitter exclusive, and while it did have Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn support at one point, it dropped them in updates during the years following Twitter’s acquisition of the company. 

Unlike Hootsuite, Tweetdeck is not a desktop-only application, and can be installed as a desktop app for both Windows and PC, and Google Chrome plug-in, in addition to being run in a browser.

Hootsuite Exclusive Features

·         More Social Media Network Integration

·         Analytics

Tweetdeck Exclusive Features

·         Customize Twitter Streams

The difference

Social Profile Integration

There’s a big difference between what TweetDeck and HootSuite can handle in terms of social profile integration. TweetDeck is quite limited, but HootSuite offers a lot more options.

Organizing Multiple Social Media Accounts

Both TweetDeck and HootSuite can merge a person's Facebook and Twitter account, simultaneously posting updates that will appear on every social media account linked to the person. TweetDeck allows users to link as many social media accounts as possible, such as five Facebook accounts and six Twitter accounts on the same TweetDeck dashboard. HootSuite can link only one Facebook and one Twitter account.

Columns

Users of TweetDeck or HootSuite will notice several vertical columns with several tweets being loaded in real-time in each column. This is the basic format for both TweetDeck and HootSuite, columned applications that display Tweets from various parties. One column can be catered to replies for your tweets while another column shows only tweets from close friends or associates. Both applications can allow the user to create as many columns as they wish, but HootSuite lets users adjust the width of their columns, while TweetDeck has fixed columns.

Scheduling tweets

 

HootSuite is able to schedule a tweet at a specific date. TweetDeck added a scheduling feature in 2010, but HootSuite has been the forerunner for allowing scheduling for a longer period of time.

URL Shorting

TweetDeck supports a number of third-party URL shortening, such as bit.ly and tinyurl. HootSuite allows only one URL shortening, ow.ly