Some things I learnt today

ResearchGate looks like an interesting source. I stumbled across it after (I'm ashamed to say) doing a Google search for a thesis from University of Utah. The result showed as a page in ResearchGate's database which includes info from: Pubmed, Arxiv, Pubmed Central, IEEE, RePEc, CiteSeer, NASA library and DOAJ. In this case it linked out to the full text in University of Utah's institutional repository - which was nice. Aside from the database it also allows researchers to network using social media features. They've got a tour here and registration is free.

Resourcing reading lists takes quite alot of time and money. You probably won't get much thanks for doing it but will probably get quite alot of complaints if it isn't done. Ho hum.

Sometimes the day just gets away with you. I've been meaning to have a look at the latest edition of Journal Citation Reports for ages but still didn't get around to it today.

This is a Click Beetle (I think). It's quite freaky when one flies down and hits you in the face!

Hootsuite just keeps on getting better with Hootsuite5 being released. Now with GeoSearch, drag and drop upload and enhanced FaceBook features among other things. Oh yeah - apparently Dolly Parton uses it too.

Hootsuite revisited

I wrote about Hootsuite as a 3rd party Twitter tool a while back. At the time it had some unique features like delayed posting, in-line url shortening, team Twittering and good stats on URL's posted.

I go through spells of not using it (or only using it to shorten links) but every now and then I have a click around and discover it's got some really good new features. It seems to be under constant development!

Some new stuff since the last time I tried it:

Facebook profile and groups posting.

You can post to your Facebook profile or to any pages you look
after. I don't use Facebook much (antisocial git that I am) but check
in every now and then. Having FB news feed in Hootsuite makes me less
likely to log into FB. It also makes me less likely to log in to
Twitter as I can do both from one place.



For anyone wanting multiple people to be able to post to a FB page - Hootsuite provides an alternative way to do that by letting you add users in your who can have their own log in to post.

Other Social Networks

Not only can you stay in touch with Facebook but also MySpace (remember that?), LinkedIn, PingFM, Wordpress, and FourSquare!

We all use different networks for different things but it's really nice to be able to access all of them form a single place. I think maybe Hootsuite have spotted a market in this.



Follower management

This is the big bonus for me. One of the things I dislike about Twitter is how difficult it is see who's following you and manage who you follow. Hootsuite now lets you look at your list of followers and choose to follow or unfollow them (unlike Twitter you don;t have to constantly page through to do this). It also gives you good info on who of your followers to follow back - like their follower to following ratio, Klout, number of tweets per day, and date joined. For follower management this is the tool for me!



I'll be trying to train my brain to make more use of this tool. I think it really cuts down on some of the weak points of Twitter and also allows you to access other networks from a single place. I'd love to know what you think of it or if there are other tools that you think are just as good?

I may never visit Twitter again! HootSuite does that for me.

I've been trying out HootSuite as a Twitter tool for the last couple of days and I have to say I'm really impressed.

A great feature of HootSuite is that you can use it to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single place. You can also configure it to allow multiple people to be able to Tweet from a single Twitter account. Great if you're managing a group Twitter stream! These are what got me interested in HootSuite but what's kept me there is some of the other features.

Here's a bit more detail:

• Posting: In-line url shortening makes it much simpler to add links. Delayed posting is also useful. If you've got more that one Twitter account set up you can post the same tweet from multiple Twitter accounts - simply tick each account you want to post from.
  

• Stats: If you use the in-line ow.ly shortening HootSuite can keep stats on how many people follow your links. The ui is really good, you can see a breakdown of clicks on all of your links...

...or click on the little graph icons in the "sent" view to get a breakdown of how many hits a particular link has had. Good for working out what your followers are interested in!

• Searches: HootSuite saves each search you run as an icon in your "Searches" tab. Really handy if you want to keep track of some trending topics or particular people. Some of the search options are quite powerful too.

• User Management: Really simple to give others editing rights. Just add a users email address and name and select whether you want their password to be sent to you or them. You can also delete editors with a single click.

• Twitterfeed-like function: There is an option in "Account Settings" that enables you configure Tweets from RSS or ATOM feeds. It's not quite as fine grained as TwitterFeed but fine for most purposes.

I've really only skimmed the surface here. It does lack follower management and the grouping functionality of say Tweetdeck right now. Another thing to be wary of is that account confirmations seem to end up in your email spam folder! In short though, I'm really impressed. The site is fast and simple and provides a great user interface for becoming a more advanced Twitter user.