HootSuite Manages YouTube, Flickr Comments

HootSuite is reaching further beyond its base on Twitter and Facebook to manage comments on other services.

The HootSuite App Directory is launching with support for YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and Get Satisfaction. HootSuite is a social media management tool for companies and digital agencies that manage multiple accounts on multiple services. On YouTube, the focus is on managing and responding to comments on photos and videos. On Get Satisfaction, a customer support service, HootSuite will provide the ability to manage responses to inquiries and complaints through the same dashboard you would use to respond to a Twitter query.

"This is something we kind of soft launched actually quite a while ago, and have been building up and polishing in the background," HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes said. Integrations with other services "are going to start coming fairly fast and furious over the next little while," he said.

HootSuite is also advertising Disqus, SlideShare, Posterous Spaces, Salesforce.com Chatter, Constant Contact, and Summify as apps that are in the works. HootSuite had previously announced integrations with Foursquare and WordPress.com and says it is working on integration with self-hosted WordPress websites. HootSuite recently added management of LinkedIn company pages and groups, as well as member status messages.

[Creating blogs, videos, and websites is pretty easy; creating compelling content is not. Check out 10 Tips For Creating Killer Social Content.]

"This positions us to be a platform for social," Holmes said. Just as Salesforce.com and other cloud vendors have established app marketplaces, HootSuite wants to be a hub for many social communications sites and applications. "We have over 2.5 million users right now, and this lets our app partners get out in front of them."

The app directory program is "open to developers on a one-by-one basis right now because we want to keep the app quality high," Holmes said, but HootSuite is seeking more partners for the program. The application integration approach is based on HTML iFrames and a JavaScript developer kit, he said. Often, partners can take a compact representation of their user interface created for mobile Web access and plug it into the HootSuite dashboard with minor modifications, he said.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard

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