Surely you’re tired of tweeting all day, right? You’ve seen everything that there is to see on the Internet. So have the folks from HootSuite. According to an email that we’ve just been sent, the company has decided that it’s time for a pivot.
Things have been going really well at HootSuite for the last while, but after watching the massive growth of Zynga and the likes, I’ve been thinking a lot about if we are in the right business? Building on top of third party platforms can be challenging, and the team and I want a change. I know that this will come as a surprise, but as of today we’re pivoting business models with the launch of Happy Owls
Happy Owls looks…um…familiar. But maybe it’s that familiarity that will help you to love it. We’ve given it a play and it’s engaging, but certainly different. A pivot, indeed.
It’s April Fool’s Day, dawg.
Pretty creative April Fools joke
Please tell me you didn’t think it was for real.
Yeah, so it sounds like a joke. But I also got an email form Hootsuite, marked confidentail and addressed to the board and investors, saying Hootsuite was moving away from its busieness model toward games. Then, a second email saying, basically, “whoops, that email wasn’t supposed to go out.” So if this is a continuation of the joke, it’s a bad joke that has undermined my confidence as a paying customer. But maybe the whole “Happy Owls” thing is a joke designed to build buzz for something that is actually real — that Hootsuite really IS moving away from being a social media dashboard? I don’t know. But the fact that I have doubts now has sent me into overdrive to look for a different product.
@Jon Gordon Funny. I thought that doing a prank that was so unbelievable was a way to have fun with people without getting them upset or riled up about being tricked. I thought the follow up was a bad attempt at making people buy into a prank that was too easy to figure out. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
@Jason Teitelman I’m not worrying too much — but just think it’s really dumb to screw with customers like that. As someone who has advocated the use of Hootsuite in my organization, I had to deal with questions about whether we are going to have to switch to something else as a result of the Hootsuite emails. So the whole thing isn’t funny to me. Quite the opposite. Why even risk planting a seed of doubt about the future of the company with the people who pay for the service?
I got this email. What a horrible attempt at a prank. Too unbelievable. Did you get the follow up. Made it even worse.
Pretty funny April Fools gag. I love a company with a sense of humor. :)
Jason: Yes, I got the second email as well. Just what I want, a vendor causing me to waste time dealing with internal questions about why the service I chose for my company is going away. Un-funny.
While it can be viewed as a prank its actually one of the best attempts to get user feedback I’ve ever seen. I’m sure they’ve been barraged with emails from users (past /present/future) and what they’ll learn from the responses will be much more helpful than an email survey that nobody fills out.