First, I must state that I am not a convinced fan of Hootsuite due to my picky nature. However, It is as close as it gets to perfect web based twitter client for me now. Recently, I have found a way how to properly save time used to post good quality content using Hootsuite.

First, this involves Google reader, and if you do not want to switch to it, it is not for you. Google reader has a “share post” option which allows to share content to your followers. Even if you have no followers, you can use this feature, because you get Atom feed.

This feed can be integrated into your Hootsuite account (settings ->RSS/Atom ->Add feed). Set time frequency to 2 hours, and limit post amount to one – you do not want to spam your readers with content like many automated twitter accounts do. It is different from automated approach, as you review the content you submit to hootsuite, thus you take care not to submit older news or uninteresting posts that happen once in a while at any feed.

Sure, this will not replace tweeting manually. You do not get all content through RSS, do you? You should take your time reading other people tweets and sharing valuable ones further. Also, not all sites provide RSS feeds or are worth subscribing.

Hootsuite (Hootsuite.com) is a very good web-based twitter account manager. It is very feature rich:

1. Multi-user multi-account management. Very useful for corporate twitter accounts.
2. Multiple columns, tabs for columns, custom groups of users. This is quite important for bigger accounts. In fact its interface is quite similar to tweetdecks or Seesmics, thus I got used to it quite fast.
3. Tweet scheduling functionality, which might be important for some
4. Feed integration (similar to twitterfeed)
5. Ping.fm integration for upgrading fb and other accounts.
6. Own url shortening service which is quite reliable and provides statistics. Also adsense integration in it.

However, there are some issues in Hootsuite that I would like to be changed or fixed:

1. Separation of groups from tabs/columns. I might want to put same group of people in multiple tabs (as I need to see them more often).
2. Better FB integration. I use Seesmic for reading FB as well as I don’t have time to check website often. Full integration with stream API would be very very nice.
3. Some things bug in groups. For example, tweets of some people are excluded when I add them to groups even if they are in main view. This is because some users do not appear in twitter search. However, this information would be easily recoverable from home stream. Or I do not get a reason for separating groups from keyword search.
4. Custom color schemes. Yeah, I am picky.
5. Ability to clean up column once it is read, or a way to distinguish between tweets that are unread.

Will I use it? Yes, definitely. Hootsuite is a very nice software and I see lots of potential in it. However, I cannot abandon desktop client in hootsuites favor yet.