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HootSuite Raises $165M Series B
- dollar 13y agoHootSuite is less than useless, as Twitter Terms of Service prohibit anything that might take eyes off of Twitter.
- togasystems 13y agoObviously you are wrong. With 237 of the Fortune 500 companies using it, it must not be that terribly useless. Disclosure: I am an engineer with HootSuite
- toomuchtodo 13y agoYou're also aware that Twitter could at anytime disallow your use of their entire API ecosystem, correct?
- josh2600 13y agoThey could, but Hootsuite pays money for access. Hootsuite is also not just for Twitter; they allow access and control of multiple social profiles. Granted most people use it only for Twitter, but the fact remains, they have a product people are willing to pay for. I can't really envision a scenario where Twitter killed them, but if you can, please share.
- twerquie 13y ago> I can't really envision a scenario where Twitter killed them, but if you can, please share. They enter the market with a competing product.
- GarethX 13y agoThey already did through their acquisition of Tweetdeck and it hasn't lead to any such action from Twitter in the years since.
- adventured 13y agoSee: "eBay Payments by Billpoint" for a classic example of how even in the most optimal scenario, the platform doesn't always win when it tries to compete with the ecosystem.
- dollar 13y ago237 of the Fortune 500 is a powerful reality distortion field. I've been right (Zynga) and wrong (Facebook) before, the future is notoriously hard to predict. The fact that anyone perceives any long term value to software with banner features like "scheduled tweets" is supremely irritating. By the time this slew of darling me-too software startups are ashes, the early stage investors will have already extracted their return. In the end, I suppose that is all that matters. What is most irksome is that HootSuite is effectively crippled because Twitter terms of service will not permit them to develop features that are in incredibly useful, and they will sue companies that do (TweetAdder). HootSuites entire business is predicated on an amicable relationship with Twitter, but if the business delivers features that are truly valuable, how do they prevent Twitter from commoditizing them within Twitters native feature set? This strategy is incredibly naive, and it's destined to fail.
- crisachow14 13y agoHootsuite is quite useful. Unlike Twitter, you can schedule tweets and view your past scheduled tweets. They also provide a lot of different metrics (which I have yet to its full potential). The navigation is pretty good though I think some features could be added/moved around (for example, being able to schedule Instagram photos). But other than that, I give Hootsuite two thumbs up. Congratulations!!
- slashCJ 13y agoI agree. scheduled tweets is to Hootsuite what filters is to Instagram. Turns out practically every person that does anykind of marketing with social media in the world wants it
- endergen 13y agoI've always thought it was the multiple account management features. I personally as individual manage multiple accounts just running groups/orgs I do on the side. In addition my whole team shares the work of watching our Company account and replying/providing-content. Schedule tweets are definitely awesome, we certainly are not using them enough. I assumed Companies like Buffer would be more specialized at that use case and had been meaning to check them out for that. Guess I should actually try what Hootsuite has built in.
- AdamWynne 13y agogratuitous plug would you mind checking out http://streamscience.co http://streamscience.co and giving me feedback on it? Its designed to give close control over scheduling and giving advice on hashtag selection.
- caniszczyk 13y agoTweetdeck does a good job with scheduled Tweets: https://web.tweetdeck.com/ https://web.tweetdeck.com/
- johns 13y agohttps://dev.twitter.com/programs/twitter-certified-products/products#Certified-Engagement-Products https://dev.twitter.com/programs/twitter-certified-products/...
- lewisflude 13y agoCongratulation guys! Looking forward to see how this all feeds back into the product.
- allsop8184 13y agoGreat to see another awesome Canadian company w/ exciting news today. Congratulations from all of us @shopify.
- speeder 13y agoIt saddens me that some companies, sometimes without revenue (I dunno if that is the case with HootSuite) get multi-million deals, and some brilliant startups by unknown people cannot get 50k USD borrowed by a bank... Although my associate worked for a Angel Investing company and my main seed investor work for a investment bank, we still don't understand who get selected to get funded or not (we DO know the formal requeriments, but seemly meeting them only make possible to talk with some investors, but that is it, lots of investors will just outright ignore you)
- photorized 13y agoNote that HootSuite is a very popular tool, almost every single marketer that I know is using it.
- speeder 13y agoI know, we use it too, but it is not only HootSuite, there are several investments that get obviously excessively popular, sometimes not tech related at all too (like Eike Batista, that convinced Brazil government to give him 10 billion and lost it all somehow...)
- photorized 13y agoThat does happen, nothing we can do about that. :)
- steveklabnik 13y ago> (I dunno if that is the case with HootSuite) From the article: > And it was already profitable.
- pkaler 13y agoYour lament/envy is misplaced in this particular case. Hootsuite sells into the enterprise and has tons of revenue. It looks like you are a game developer by looking at your profile. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but game companies just aren't that great of an investment for investors. Game development is a hit based business and investors prefer to invest in scalable, repeatable models.
- photorized 13y agoCongrats to the HootSuite team - that's a very impressive valuation. We recently built our own social media data discovery and analytics platform, and whenever we run reports on software clients for top tweets - HootSuite is always in 1st or 2nd position. Nice market penetration there. Plug below - In case anyone is interested - ours is not designed to replace HootSuite but to complement it: http://signup.itrendcorporation.com/ http://signup.itrendcorporation.com/ Would love to get some feedback from you folks.
- livestyle 13y agoThe team over at Buffer must be pretty stoked to see how big this market really is.
- drpgq 13y agoWell at least they've ended their unpaid interns policy.
- superconductor 13y agoYup, use them up, spit them out, ??? and profit.
- patmcguire 13y ago"One of the goals of the financing is to clean up our cap table. To this end, we are allowing former Seesmic shareholders to liquidate their positions. At the current valuation, you will realize an almost 40% return in the 11 short months that you’ve been an investor. We would greatly appreciate your help by selling your stake." I don't know the situation, but that sounds odd.
- photorized 13y agoI would view this as preparation for being acquired by a larger entity.
- unknownian 13y agoWhat happened to interesting (especially hardware) startups? Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I want to improve the social media experience of brands!"? Oh that's right, they can't get funding because MBAs don't care about super laser tech or virtual reality devices, but whatever gets them the most money.
- joonix 13y agoSerious question, what happened to the companies that popped up in the 90s that: * Helped enterprise clients manage their customer service email accounts * Helped enterprise clients manage their web pages Eventually "social media" will just become a normal part of the internet. Just another company taking advantage of the idiocy and fear prevalent in large enterprises. "Hmm, this social media thing sounds big. We need to be involved in social media. Who can we throw buckets of money at to pretend they are helping us with our social media?"