Back in August, HootSuite wanted to kick their internal development and improvement into high gear, so they scheduled a two-day hackathon. “#HootHackathon is a two day sprint to build something new, fix something old or just create something awesome.” Projects are wide-ranging, and inspiration comes from a variety of sources, but most important are HootSuite’s Feedback Forum entries – comments and suggests and requests from HootSuite users. HootSuite made it a goal to build three of the most-requested features in the forums, and this is the fourth one (the first was being able to see who’s retweeting you, the second was viewing Twitter relationships, and the third was seeing new followers in a stream).
Clear Streams within HootSuite
But the HootSuite teams weren’t finished, and have continued to add additional user-requested features. This time, it’s the ability to clear an entire stream of any posts that you’ve read, addressed or are otherwise obsolete, leaving only the posts that may still merit or require your attention.
The Dashboard setup that HootSuite employs can often appear dense and busy. That’s why we started an entire series on HootSuite, and devoted an entire article just to setting up Tabs and Streams. And for many users, following active Twitter searches or large groups of people will result in rapidly updating streams of tweets that can be challenging to keep up with. Being able to clear out the tweets you’ve already addressed is a huge benefit.
On any Twitter streams you’ve set up for Mentions, Direct Messages or Searches, click on the down arrow on the stream title bar to reveal options to Filter or Clear the stream. After you’ve cleared a stream, you will also have the option to Restore all cleared items to the stream.
This is particularly useful when using keyword searches for prospecting and customer service. You can clear out tweets that you’ve forwarded to other team members, replied to, read, or otherwise handled.
Not only does this make it easier to focus on the remaining tweets that need to be read, it also gives you the satisfaction of a completely cleared stream if you’ve taken care of everything! You will be able to tell at a glance if one of your streams has completely new tweets to be read, rather than having to take a closer look at the latest tweet and recall whether or not you or another team member has already read it.
We’ll be looking forward any other features HootSuite plans to release anxiously, and will certainly let you know what they are when they’re announced. In the meantime, I would encourage you to dive into my series on HootSuite: How to Make the Most of Your HootSuite Account, where we cover the basics like setting up your dashboard and scheduling content, to more advanced topics like Teams and more. You can also grab a free trial of HootSuite (thanks for using my affiliate link! I appreciate the support), or contact me directly for help getting started.