Gowalla is a location-based app that, until last week, shared a lot of similarities with Foursquare – the leading location-based app today. First launched about two and a half years ago, Gowalla has steadily grown to an active user-base of two million (about one fifth the number of users that Foursquare has). I’ve always liked Gowalla and I think they have a better interface and user experience than Foursquare, but there have always been so few people in Indiana who use Gowalla.

Just last week, Gowalla released a brand new version of their website and mobile app (iOS version here and Android version here) that really rebrands Gowalla. Rather than focusing on being a location-based check-in network (and, honestly, they were losing that fight to Foursquare. Even Facebook recently gave up on Places - their equivalent check-in service), Gowalla now seems to be more of a curated location guide app. If that sounds kind of weird, keep reading.

In the image above, you can see the new curated guide for the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. By working with staff at Notre Dame, Gowalla put together a great guide showcasing what visitors to the university needed to check out while they are in town. There are more than 60 curated guides available for cities throughout the world and Gowalla is working to add dozens more soon. While Gowalla has worked with select cities and destinations to create these branded and curated guides, you can still create guides on your own, both as an individual and as a DMO.

When looking at the tourism industry as a whole, there are benefits to using both Foursquare and Gowalla. If you own or work at a hotel, attraction or a restaurant, Foursquare makes more sense as they allow users to manage venues they own and offer check-in specials. But, if you work for a city, county, regional or state DMO Gowalla probably actually makes more sense to use. As a DMO, you have the built-in authority about your area and you can create great guides for anything you want – wine trails, food trails, museum guides, historic sites and more. When you create guides for your visitors, you’ve putting your stamp of authority on the guide and letting them know which things they absolutely must do before leaving your location.

Have you ever used Gowalla or Foursquare? Do you think Gowalla’s new curated guides functionality would be helpful as a visitor to a new place?

At its core, Pinterest is a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious or SpringPad, but where Pinterest differs (and where they really shine) is how their bookmarks are organized. Rather than saving a list of text links, Pinterest is 100% image-based. The visual nature of Pinterest creates a clean and easily browsable interface that can be extremely addicting.

So, how does Pinterest describe itself?

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

- Pinterest.com

Pinterest Wall - Places I'd Like to Visit

You’re likely to find boards and pins full of decorating ideas and recipes as well as just about anything else you could think of, but Pinterest has a really unique opportunity to be a great place for Tourism entities to set up shop. In fact, I set up an account for Visit Indiana a couple months ago and have received a pretty good response so far. I’ve created boards for Favorite Indiana Destinations, Indiana Artisan Products, Indiana Beer and Wine, Indiana Arts and Crafts and Indiana Experiences. Each time I come across a great picture of somewhere in Indiana or something Indiana-related on Etsy, I pin it and share it with everyone who follows Visit Indiana.

You can browse Pinterest in several different ways. You can view just pins from your friends or you can search for and browns pins in countless topics (travel, decorating, recipes, etc.). One of the coolest features on pinterest is the ability to “repin” other people’s pins. Just like sharing on Facebook or retweeting on Twitter repinning posts the pin on your board so your friends can see it. It’s a great way to catalog pictures or links you want to keep handy.

Regardless of what kind of tourism organization you work for (State, County or City DMO or individual attraction or lodging facility) Pinterest offers you the ability to share great photos of places in your area, locally-made products or hidden destinations for visitors and residents alike.

Note that Pinterest is only available on iPhone/iPod Touch right now.

Are you already using Pinterest? If not, do you think its a good fit for your organization?

Also, similar to the way Gowalla allows users to create Guides, Foodspotting also lets users to create Guides like Taste the Vintage in Bucks County - created by the Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau. This particular guide looks great on both the mobile app and on the website and it details some great wineries throughout the county. As a bonus, you earn a badge once you visit all the wineries within the Guide.

As a tourism office, you’re in the unique position to be the curator for great food in your area. Like Bucks County did, you could created Guides for great wine, great burgers, great ethnic food or anything else food-related for visitors and residents to complete and add to. The more people that jump on the platform and add their favorite foods, the more useful and robust the app will become.

Check out the screenshots below for examples of the Footspotting mobile app (Foodspotting is now available for iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile and Android devices right now – a Blackberry app is coming soon). Have you used Foodspotting before?

Interestingly enough, $99/month is not the top price point – the highest price plan is actually $1,999/month with Ow.ly Vanity URL service (see this page for more information). Beyond the fact that only the largest of organizations can afford nearly $50,000 a year for an SaaS social media management solution, I’m feeling a bit betrayed by HootSuite by their new pricing structure.

I’ve long been a supporter of HootSuite and have recommended it to anyone who manages their organization’s social media initiatives. I’ve even written about them several times on this blog. I don’t even mind that ads are included in the free plan. Most web users are used to seeing ads when they get something for free. And while I completely understand that HootSuite can’t continue to offer their product for free forever – no company can survive on unlimited VC funding without a solid revenue model – but I think they went about creating their paid accounts the wrong way.

Where Did HootSuite Go Wrong?

• First of all, only giving current users about a week to decide which plan to sign up for seems really quick. I’ve known that some kind of paid options was on its way for some time now, but the number and cost of options makes this a difficult decision to make in a week’s time.
• HootSuite has completely eliminated Team Members from the Free and $5/month options and even with the $20 option, you only get to add 1 team member. You have to move up to the $50/month plan in order to delegate your social media duties to more than one other team member.
• This feels like a bit of a bait & switch to me. Typically, when a service introduces paid options, they’ll include extra features and more in-depth analytics with their paid packages, but the free option usually stays the same. HootSuite is now crippling their free (and, in my opinion even their $5/month) option by limiting the number of social networks and RSS feeds.

What Could HootSuite Have Done Differently?

• Give current HootSuite users more of a heads-up and the ability to switch between the different account options for a month or so to better determine which package they would need to continue using HootSuite for their organization’s social media management.
• Create fewer, more simplified options. Rather than 4 paid options (not including the Enterprise option) HootSuite could have offered $10, $25 or $50 per month options in addition to their free plan. These options could contain escalating features, but this could offer users a more simplified way to choose their plans. They could have also offered a one-time fee to  “purchase” any of the plans, rather than paying by the month.
• HootSuite also should have either left the free option as it was (with the ability to add Team Members and manage more than 5 accounts and more than 1 RSS feed) and added more advanced features for paid users, or they should have implemented their paid structure before introducing all of their advanced features. By implementing so many great features, then putting many of them behind the pay wall, I wouldn’t be surprised if HootSuite sees a significant amount of users defect to other platforms.

Is HootSuite Still Worth Using?

In a word…Absolutely. I still think HootSuite is the best and most complete social media management tool out there and even though most of its best features are only available to paid members now, it’s still worth looking into for your organization. While you’ll have to decide for yourself whether it’s worth $20 or $50 per month for the more in-depth features, I still think HootSuite offers more than its competitors.

If you’re interested in checking out an alternative to HootSuite, you should look into Seesmic (both web- and desktop-based versions), CoTweet (web-based) and TweetDeck (desktop-based). Seesmic and TweetDeck also have iPhone and Android versions available. In fact, Seesmic, TweetDeck, CoTweet and others would do themselves a big favor if they started courting frustrated HootSuite users like Posterous’ campaign to woo users from Blogger and from Wordress.

Have you used HootSuite before? If so, does their new pricing structure make you rethink using them to manage your social media initiatives?

1: How the Old Spice Videos are Being Made | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: You’ve probably see the commercials on TV, but the agency responsible for this campaign went into overdrive this week and cranked out more than 80 180 customized videos for celebrities as well as big (and little) names in social media. They’ve created a very viral campaign that doesn’t bash you over the head with Old Spice. But, like Doug Karr asks, will people buy more Old Spice because of it?

2: Facebook’s Open Graph and Like Buttons are Going Mobile | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: While this article is short on details, the idea of bringing Open Graph and the now-ubiquitous Like button to mobile is enticing, especially for businesses in the travel and tourism industries.

3: New Hootsuite Features Offer More Insight About Your Customers | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: We’ve written about Hootsuite countless times before, and their addition of filtering by Klout (influence) scores or keyword are sure to help you focus on the right followers to engage.

4: The Top 5 Reasons to Switch from WordPress to Posterous | Posterous

Social Mediarology thinks: While we’re big fans of WordPress here, this post was quite convincing. If you’re looking for a user-friendly, if less robust and customizable, option for blogging, Posterous might just be for you.

If you’re read some of my previous posts, you’ll know that I really like HootSuite and use it for my social media management. Not only does it aggregate Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, WordPress and MySpace, (yeah, I said MySpace. Who even uses MySpace anymore?) but with each new release, they add better and better functionality. I’ve written about how to manage your social media initiatives with HootSuite as well as some of HootSuites Expanded Capabilities, but today’s post will focus on the new features in HootSuite5.

Of all the upgrades in HootSuite5, you’ll need an HTML5-capable browser to take advantage of some of the best ones. I won’t go into HTML5 too much, but it’s one of the next big things on the internet and will enable much easier web coding and interactivity. The following browsers are HTML5-capable, and you if you ant to take advantage of the best features of HootSuite5, you should download one of them:

• Firefox 3.6
• Chrome 5
• Safari 5
• Internet Explorer 8

Geolocation-based Search

With HootSuite5, you can easily narrow your Twitter searches to just people in your area. If you’ve used Twitter Search to look for trending topics, you’ll noticed that unless you’re very specific with what you’re searching for, you’ll get a lot of tweets that may have nothing to do with your search. Many times, you’ll even see tweets in foreign languages. By utilizing an HTML5-capable browser’s geolocation capabilities, you can search more effectively, using local Tweeters to help answer your queries.

Integrated Google Analytics

If you’re anything like me, you spend a bit of time each month tracking your analytics, especially as it relates to your social media initiatives. If you use Google Analytics to track data on your site, you no longer have to go back and forth between multiple browser windows or tabs to see your analytics data – HootSuite has baked it in with HootSuite5. Once you start tweeting, you can even see your standard webstats and how many visits you received through your HootSuite Tweets!

Another tip for more accurate analysis of traffic to your website through your HootSuite shortened links: When you hover over the Shrink URL field, you can click on Advanced and then you can add custom source information to the end of EVERY link you shorten through HootSuite’s Ow.ly/Ht.ly URL shortener. Since I use Google Analytics, I’ve included the `utm_source=` and `utm_medium=` fields so I can easily see that a referral link came through HootSuite. If you use another analytics package, you should be able to append other information to the end of your URLs so you can track them as well.

Use Either Classic Retweets or New Retweets

If you’re a bit fuzzy on the difference between a ‘classic retweet’ and a ‘new retweet’ check out my Sharing, Retweeting and Mentions on Facebook and Twitter post. Older versions of HootSuite only allowed you to use the ‘classic retweet’ option, which meant that you could add your own comments, but you may have had to shorten or modify the tweet so it would still fit within the 140-character limit. The ‘new retweet’ option is the default in HootSuite5, and allows for one-click retweeting of content. Since it is the default, if you want to go back to the ‘classic retweet’ simply click on the owl at the top left, then select, Settings -> Preferences and uncheck the box next to Use Twitter Web retweets.

Enhanced Facebook Features

With older versions of HootSuite, when you posted a link to Facebook, the URL would simply show up in your status, but it wouldn’t include any of the rich options that are included when you include a link directly from Facebook. For that reason, I didn’t use HootSuite to post links to Facebook very often. That’s all changed with HootSuite5 and when you include a link to post to Facebook, a new dialog box comes up that allows you choose in image from the linked-to page as well as include some further description beneath the link – just like it works if you post the link directly from Facebook. This is a huge improvement in my book.

Drag and Drop Images to Twitter

This is another one off the features that you’ll need an HTML5-capable browser to use. Rather than having to click on the upload an image button and search for the image on your computer, you can now just drag the image and drop it right into the HootSuite5 status box. HootSuite automatically uploads it to their servers and spits back out a shortened URL directly to your image. This is just another great feature of HTML5 and HootSuite5.

There are still a few more new features in HootSuite5, but I’ve covered some of the most important ones. You can find the full list of updates on HootSuite’s blog.

Enhanced Team Collaboration:

In an effort to expand team collaboration, HootSuite has changed the way users manage accounts.  When you add an account, you’ll be asked if you are the owner. As an owner, you can give access to the account to other team members who also manage the account. As account owner, you have full control of adding or deleting members. Since the account owner can give access to team members, each member can manage those accounts (Twitter, Facebook, etc) through HootSuite without needing to know the master password for each social media account. This just enhances the privacy for those accounts and puts the organization in control of their social media accounts.

The video below should give you a good feel for HootSuite’s expanded team collaboration features.

Reply All Feature:

If you’ve ever tried to reply to a tweet where multiple people are mentioned, you know it’s a bit of a hassle to type in everyone’s handle. HootSuite has fixed that problem by implementing their Reply All feature.

Simply hover over  the right-hand corner of any tweet and click on the down arrow. Then click on Reply All and your updates box will automatically populate with the twitter handles of everyone mentioned in the Tweet. This makes replying to multiple people in the same message easy.

Hootsuite University:

HootSuite University is another featured that was launched last week. Beginning on May 1, HootSuite will offer their HootSuite Professional Program. The program includes HootSuite Training Certification, a monthly webinar and a place for members to network, share ideas and talk with one another. For more information click on the image below or visit Learn.HootSuite.com.

If you have an iPhone, you can start managing your social media efforts from your cell phone. If you have an Android phone or a Blackberry, rest assured that HotSuite is working on an app for you as well.

Are you using HootSuite to manage your social media efforts? If not, how do you manage them?

If you’ve already created a Twitter account, a Facebook Fan Page and a WordPress blog for your organization, you’re on the right track. Now that you have accounts at a handful of social media sites, how do you manage them all?

There are dozens of social media management platforms out there, including some great ones like TweetDeck and Seesmic. Both are great applications, but they need to be installed on your computer. One of the many great things about Hootsuite is it’s 100% web-based. You simply visit Hootsuite.com, log in and you can manage your social media initiatives from any computer with an internet connection.

Hootsuite Screenshot

Hootsuite originally launched in late 2008 as a dedicated Twitter client. As you can see from this screenshot, it’s evolved into a powerful social media management platform. In addition to Twitter, you can now manage Facebook (including Facebook Fan Pages), LinkedIn, WordPress and the lesser-used Ping.FM.

Do you want to post the same message to your Facebook page and your Twitter account? Do you want to set up your blog to feed through to your Twitter and Facebook accounts? Do you want to set up multiple accounts so different people at your organization can help manage your social media strategy? Hootsuite lets you do all this and more.

Hootsuite Stats Screenshot

Hootsuite also automatically shortens links using their Ow.ly URL shortener and gives you detailed stats about each links posted through Hootsuite. You can look at link stats from the past 24 hours, past week, past month or any other timeframe.

I’ve been using Hootsuite as my primary social media management tool for the past several months and I’ve been extremely impressed. There is a Hootsuite App available for iPhone and I’m waiting for the Blackberry app that will hopefully follow.

Have you used Hootsuite?