Twitter Power-tools: HootSuite Vs. CoTweet (Updated!)

Like it or not, Twitter has become an essential tool for the freelancer's toolbox. Be it for marketing, networking, research, finding jobs, or learning new techniques (I find myself using it for all of the above!). Managing all of these varied activities can be a difficult task. Add to that the management of multiple Twitter accounts (personal, work, etc.), Facebook and other social networking tools, and you've got an overwhelming mess to deal with. Thankfully some smart folks have put together some Twitter power-tools to help you stay on top of your social network universe.

Let me say from the start that this post isn't meant to be a complete overview of all the Twitter tools available to you. Including all of the iPhone apps, this would be an infinite blog post. This post is meant to be a comparison of Twitter Power-tools. These tools are capable of managing multiple Twitter accounts at an enterprise level. Also, an important fact to include for this study is that both of these tools are currently free. Let's face it, a web service has to be pretty sweet for us to pay for it.

My two favorites in this category are CoTweet and HootSuite (and they rhyme- woo hoo!). I use both of these regularly and find them each useful for different reasons.

CoTweet

On March 2nd 2010, CoTweet was purchased by ExactTarget, a targeted marketing service for multiple platforms including email and sms. They are poised to become a leader in enterprise level marketing for business across multiple platforms.

Pros

• While the home page isn't much to look at, the user dashboard is a clean, sleek-looking interface. It's minimal layout makes it feel very spacious, and much detail has been given to the texture of the UI. 
• CoTweet allows you to have multiple users managing multiple Twitter handles. Not only can you manage your own work and personal accounts together, you can allow many colleagues to manage your company account.
• Tweets can be sent immediately or scheduled for automatic posting later.
• Much like your Gmail account, CoTweet allows you to archive tweets which you may want to access later.
• CoTweet allows you to create lists and saved searches which you can access easily on the left sidebar.
• Perhaps my favorite function of CoTweet is the power it gives to corporations or organizations to manage their Twitter presence together. CoTweet does this in two ways. First, you can assign tweets to fellow users for them to follow up with. This helps delegate the responsibility of following up leads and questions from customers. Second, my very favorite, is the ability to assign someone as the 'On Duty' tweeter. This allows your company to be sure someone is always monitoring Twitter while keeping everyone else from wasting precious time checking and re-checking their twitter accounts all day long.
• Since CoTweet allows multiple users to manage one or more Twitter handles, the personal connection is lost to a corporate impersonal Twitter face. CoTweet combats this with CoTags; sort of like signatures for tweets. I could set things up so that after each of my tweets, CoTweet would automatically append ^MDH so that all the world (or even just my colleagues) know who the tweet came from. While you could always do this manually, it's nice to have it automated.

Cons

• No Facebook support.
• Saved searches don't seem to support advanced search operators such as near: and within: for geographically specific searches. You'll have to keep heading over to search.twitter.com for those.
• Drilling down to find specific tweets or determining exactly what you're looking at isn't super intuitive. I prefer HootSuite's tabbed approach.

HootSuite

HootSuite released a major update on April 13th 2010, taking their game to an amazing new level. With the tools added in this update, HootSuite is becoming not just a Twitter client and not even just a customer service or marketing tool. With the Team Management features we now have at our fingertips we have a robust Project Management tool in the works. Quick and easy team collaboration is going to help us get things done more efficiently. Read on for the details.

Pros

• The 4/13 update added some amazing features for Teams and Project Management.
  • A whole team of users can now manage your corporate twitter account. Administrators control access permissions for team members. Advanced team members can modify the account details and invite new members. Only Owners have total control over the account.
  • So HootSuite now provides 3 tiers of administrative permissions: Owners, Advanced Team Members, and Basic Team Members. These permissions can be moved around in case you need to change leadership of the team.
  • Not only can team members be added to the company account, since team members log in to HootSuite with their own credentials they can add their own social networks to their account and manage everything in one place.
  • May 6th, 2010 Hootsuite added tweet assignments allowing you to delegate follow-up responsibilities to your team members. Great for providing support!
  • With the new Reply All feature, it's easy to reply to all of the people in a conversation.
  • Check out the blog post on the update.
• iPhone app. Not only can you manage several social networks in your browser, HootSuite offers a matching iPhone app to post tweets, search, and even check stats. Very helpful. More on this in the con's.
• HootSuite lets you manage Twitter, Facebook, Facebook pages, Ping.fm, and LinkedIn accounts. As if this weren't enough, your Wordpress blog, MySpace account, and Foursquare can be plugged in (these features are in beta). And you can plug any RSS feed into any of your HootSuite streams. That means my blog posts here can automagically be passed on through my Twitter and Facebook.
• Stats. As long as you use HootSuite's automatic URL shortener (ow.ly or ht.ly), HootSuite will track the number of clicks, regional information, and referring sites. It even allows you to track by custom date range.
• As with CoTweet, your tweets can be posted immediately or scheduled to post at a later date or time.
• HootSuite's tabbed layout allows you to add columns to any tab with pretty much any content. Of course you will have a tab for each profile you're managing (ie- Facebook, personal Twitter, work Twitter, etc.). Beyond this, you can add columns for custom content such as Twitter lists, custom Twitter searches, or keyword tracking. For example, my @MDHdesign tab not only has columns for followers' tweets, my sent tweets, and mentions, but also has a column searching the internet for job posts. I have a separate tab following Drupal keywords (#drupal) and searching for Drupal job postings.
• The Hootlet is a convenient bookmarklet which (when dragged to your bookmarks) makes it super easy to tweet new finds or favorite sites. Along with all this, HootSuite just released several apps and plugins for browsers, desktop widgets, etc. 

Cons

• I mentioned the iPhone app, and it is wonderful. So far, it only allows Twitter updates (Facebook is on the way) so you have to log on to the website to update the rest. As of May 2010, you can now manage Twitter and Facebook updates via the app. That may be enough to take this one out of the cons! And it's $2. I still paid for it and think it's worth it.
• While HootSuite does allow multiple users to access the same account, there are no advanced management features such as tweet assignments and 'on duty' status like in CoTweet. (although I there is reason to believe that assignments are on the way. See 'On the Roadmap'.)
• Just like CoTweet, advanced Twitter search operators don't seem to work in HootSuite columns.

Which one should you choose?

Both of these are great web apps and, indeed, Twitter Power-tools. Both are great at doing what they do. At the end of the day, I find myself returning again and again to HootSuite. it's attractive layout and variety of advanced features just do what I need it to do. Recent updates all but catch it up to CoTweet on the corporate marketing level. Having said that, if I were a web marketing manager for a company with several staff members, CoTweet's advanced management tools (assigning tweets and 'on duty' status) would make me use it much more often. 

What do you think? Have you used these tools? Are there other Twitter Power-tools you recommend?