HootSuite Extends Its Social Media Wings With Evernote, Storify, Zendesk Integrations

HootSuite, the Vancouver-based developers of a social media management dashboard for enterprises and other power users, is adding three new outlets to the list of social networks that are supported on its platform: from today there will be plugins available for Evernote, Storify and Zendesk that will let users send content created natively for Twitter and Facebook to these three, on top of support already offered to manage interactions on Twitter, Facebook and other sites like LinkedIn for some five million users worldwide.

HootSuite notes that this is a development on how the App Directory has been used since its creation in 2011: originally it was intended as a dashboard “focused primarily on populating streams within HootSuite.” It says it will be adding more plugins to extend the new functionality even further, covering areas like customer support, CRM and publishing — putting HootSuite in much closer competition with the likes of Oracle and Salesforce, which are also converging on this area.

The move enhances HootSuite’s position as a social data management platform in its own right, and makes it a more relevant one-stop shop for companies looking to consolidate and monitor how it engages and gets mentioned across the whole of the social media galaxy.

The plugins are part of HootSuite’s free offerings.

HootSuite notes that the Evernote app plugin will give users the ability to save these conversations directly into Evernote notebooks. These notes, which can be viewed in a stream, can then be shared out to other social networks.

The Zendesk integration will mean that a particular Twitter or Facebook post can be instantly “actioned” with a ticket for work within the HootSuite dashboard, adding in elements like priority level or assign to specific users.

The Storify integration will mean that users can create Storify narratives directly from content being monitored via HootSuite, rather than resorting to a copy/paste process as in the past.

“We’ve decided to take its functionality to the next level, and have introduced plugin capabilities to increase the interaction possible between the HootSuite dashboard, and other external applications”, says Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, said in a statement. “With the addition of app plugins, we’re making it possible for our users to monitor their social media properties from the dashboard, then delegate messages for additional handling in external, third party applications. This tighter coupling between HootSuite and its integrated apps extends the power of both.”

HootSuite tells me that the App Directory has been “extremely successful” to date, with around 15% of new users adding at least one app in the first week of signing up for HootSuite. YouTube and Instagram are the most popular apps to date, it says.

It chose Evernote, Storify and Zendesk as its first three integrations because of a number of requests for current customers across its Free, Pro and Enterprise segments. “We also have great relationships with Evernote, Zendesk and Storify and they provide strong use cases for the plugin framework,” a spokesperson tells me.

There is some further integration work that may need to be done on HootSuite’s dashboard, which currently divides up content between “App Plugins” and “App Streams”.

App Plugins let developers and partners a way to tap into the social media content surfaced in HootSuite, by providing the ability to send individual pieces of social content (from native Twitter and Facebook streams) to 3rd party applications. Users can send specific tweets and posts from their HootSuite streams to 3rd party applications. (For example, Storify is an app plugin only)

App Streams, meanwhile, brings social content from outside apps into streams on the HootSuite dashboard can also be shared through the dashboard as well. (Youtube has app streams only.)

“Apps Streams and Plugins are not mutually exclusive and some HootSuite apps may have both an app stream and plugin,” a spokesperson tells me. (Evernote has both incidentally.)