Just a few days after Twitter launched its new homepage, HootSuite also revamped their interface. They offered an “early upgrade to HootSuite 2.0” for everyone.
I tried out the new interface, and I must say it’s not bad. For those people who have used the old HootSuite before, the interface isn’t too difficult to navigate. For people who haven’t used this Twitter client, though, the interface may look quite complicated, but is also very intuitive.
One of the major changes in the HootSuite 2.0 interface is the addition of multiple columns. By default there’s the home feed column, mentions, direct messages inbox, and pending tweets in a three-column-at-a-time view. In the old HootSuite, these columns used to be separate tabs. I believe the change from tabs to columns was a smart choice since some people like me want to view multiple things at once.
The multi-user support is also a key feature in HootSuite. In HootSuite 2.0, different Twitter accounts appear as separate tabs. This is also very helpful, since it is easy to navigate to different accounts, but if you manage a lot of accounts, it gets cumbersome. The tabs can also be reordered by drag-and-drop, another time-saving feature.
Other features in HootSuite include:
- User profile viewing
- Favorite, direct-message, reply, and re-tweet
- Auto-refresh
- Embeddable columns (which don’t work for me)
- And much more!
I would give HootSuite an 8.5/10 and would seriously recommend it to anyone who has multiple Twitter accounts or who just loves tweeting.
