TweetDeck vs. HootSuite.... Which is Better?

So our Media studies lecturer gave us the excruciating task of writing an article about social media dashboards, “TweetDeck” and “HootSuite”. His instructions were to write about the similarities and differences between the two.  Now when the lecturer was busy briefing us about this task, the first thing that came to mind was, “what the hell? What do I know about this?”  But then, I remembered, had I used one of these services before.

 Last year when I was doing my internship at Iziko Museums of South Africa, I worked on HootSuite. Shelley Finch, who was the content Online content coordinator at the time had taught me how to use the service. For three months I was given the responsibility of handling the social media of the company. My responsibility was to come up with relevant content, schedule it on HootSuite so that it would come up on the company’s Facebook and twitter page.  So I at least had some knowledge of one of these services, the only problem that I was facing was that I didn’t have the slightest idea of what TweetDeck was. This meant that I had some researching to do, Great! In doing my research I found a few interesting facts about how similar and yet different these services are to one another.

This is what I had found:  Both of these are available for free. Both services allow you to view your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts simultaneously in one place and check for updates.  Both allow you to easily update your social media accounts and to schedule tweets ahead of time.

The single biggest difference between HootSuite and TweetDeck is that TweetDeck is an application that the user downloads and installs, while HootSuite is web-based.  Because of this, HootSuite runs “lighter” resource-wise on the user’s computer, and can be used on any computer without having to install software, which ideal for a shared computer. Also, scheduling future tweets is easier on HootSuite.

Many of the posts I’ve read about the differences between HootSuite and TweetDeck have argued that TweetDeck is better from a following perspective. I think it’s pretty much even, but I can certainly see how people who are comfortable with the TweetDeck service and would want to stick with it.

To TweetDeck’s advantage, it is slightly easier to search and can post tweets faster than HootSuite.  TweetDeck also has instant updates, while HootSuite updates every two minutes at most.  In addition, TweetDeck allows unlimited accounts, while only HootSuite’s pro version offers unlimited accounts.

HootSuite and TweetDeck are both very good at managing social networks, and your preference may depend most on look and feel, and not the features, which are relatively similar and always changing. Try them out to see, which social media service you would prefer.