Earlier this year I published a side-by-side comparison of HootSuite and CoTweet as social business applications. HootSuite won, at least in this blogger’s opinion, due to its rich feature sets and its broad product offering. This week, the company announced that it is taking that offering even further. For one, it added an iPad application, which was a very smart move. Second, it made its very popular mobile applications free. That’s right, they are no longer charging for iPhone, BlackBerry or Android apps. So, what is the future for HootSuite? And how is it addressing social media other than just giving us superb apps for content management? In this latest installment of 100 Brains, I spoke with founder Ryan Holmes about what’s shaping his business.
Q. HootSuite has been on fire with its innovation and product announcements this year. Without getting into proprietary information, will you tell me a little bit about what is driving all of these new products?
A. Thank you. I am very proud of what the team has accomplished in the past year. The product development features come from several sources specifically our users (feedback.hootsuite.com), and our team.
Q. HootSuite now has different versions of its products — consumer, enterprise, mobile. Which one is being adopted the most quickly and what are some of the drivers for that adoption?
A. We have had great adoption on mobile with iPhone, Android, and soon, BlackBerry. That being said, the web client is 1.5 years old and is our most popular product. We have over 800K users and 1.7 million social networks under management.
Q. Do you believe that there is a need for tools somewhere between consumer and enterprise so that small businesses can also scale, but keep these social tools within their budgets?
A. Absolutely, this is a large focus of our paid offering which…at $5.99 per month and includes rich analytics, three team members and unlimited social networks.
