This article was published on September 27, 2011

HootSuite acquires What the Trend to protect you from social media faux pas


HootSuite acquires What the Trend to protect you from social media faux pas

We here at TNW have been big fans (and users) of social media dashboard HootSuite for quite some time. The Canadian startup has done huge things over the past year, including raising $3 million in funding and acquisitions of the Twapper Keeper and TwitterBar tools. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company is introducing another acquisition today, of context provider What the Trend.

What the Trend has been a staple of the Twittersphere for quite some time, giving insight into what is causing trending topics to trend around the world. What’s been interesting is the human curation aspect of What the Trend, which deciphers into plain English the often-times cryptic trending topics via a process of investigation and crowdsourcing.

It should be another great addition to an already-powerful product. HootSuite has been an SaaS success story since coming out of the gate and is now well over 2 million users worldwide.

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The WtT integration looks great, too. But selecting your search box, you’ll be able to find not only trending topics, but also have the ability to click a question mark on both the web-based and mobile version in order to find out why something is trending. Why is it important? In a world where social media can make or break a reputation, it’s crucial to know what’s causing something to trend before hopping into a discussion.

We’re also told that, in the coming weeks, deeper integration will happen. WtT’s co-founder and lead developer Paul Colton will be working with the HootSuite team and you should see integration with the existing WtT extensions and mash-ups.

Our congratulations go out to both HootSuite and What the Trend. We’re looking forward to seeing what the collaboration between the two names will bring in the future.

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