Just to keep you in the loop, here are some of the top stories in the social media and online marketing world from the past week:

Facebook announces changes to Pages

Come August 23rd, Facebook’s long-talked about about changes to Pages will take effect. Any custom boxes on your Facebook Page (business pages, not personal profile) will disappear unless you move the content into a custom tab, which are becoming narrower.

It’s still a little unclear to me exactly what will be left in the left sidebar of your Page when boxes are gone, and how, if at all, you’ll be able to add custom info to the main page. I'm sure Facebook's 'wisdom' will be revealed in time.

Hootsuite goes freemium
Hootsuite pulled the rug from under many of its users this week when it announced its set of paid plans. Yes, they still have a free plan but it’s very limited. Paid plans run from $5/month all the way up to the rather comical $1499/month (stop laughing, they're actually being serious!) for their Enterprise edition.

Rapportive for Gmail
If you use Gmail, Rapportive is a very cool new add-on which displays information about all your contacts, culled from their social networks, right inside your inbox. Stalker-ish? Possibly, but still very cool and useful to further connect with people on various social networks.

“Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.You can immediately see what people look like, where they're based, and what they do. You can establish rapport by mentioning shared interests. You can grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. And you can record thoughts for later by leaving notes.Imagine relationship management built into your email. For free.”

Twitter creates their own official tweet button
This isn’t all too revolutionary considering that there are currently a plethora of ways to add a “tweet this” style button to your website, but Twitter has decided to come out with their own.  There are already lots of WordPress plugins that support it.

Header image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/2537309848/

Yesterday, my go-to Twitter application, Hootsuite, decided to go ‘freemium.’ Without getting into the pros and cons, I’ll just say that while they are still offering a free service, it is very limited compared to the rich features I’ve been enjoying for a long time. This has created quite a backlash amongst their users, with accusations of bait & switch. If you’re interested in seeing some of the sentiment – just search on Twitter for ‘Hootsuite’ and you’ll see the range of reactions.

The bigger lesson here is to start thinking about how this applies to customer service, and how it could apply to your own business when you have to change the model or create revenue streams, and even to bloggers who want to monetize their sites.

Some thoughts sparked by this whole debacle:

1) No matter what business you are in, if you willingly provide a service to people for free, those people are still your customers and deserve to be treated as such – not as second-class citizens.

2) If you build a business model on the information, feedback and support you got from a free user base – don’t take that for granted. Instead think about how you can continue to support them. Just saying ‘well you got the services for free for a long time and now it’s time to pay’ – is not acceptable. Can you ‘grandfather’ them in to your new service rather than alienate them, or somehow reward your loyal users?

3) The line between a profitable business model and treating your customers like commodities is thin. In Hootsuite’s case, I understand providing a limited free service, but wanting to hijack people’s Twitter streams with ads – that’s a disrespectful step too far and devalues the whole point of using the service. Remember that ‘users’, ‘readers’  or whichever term you use, are actually people – not just numbers. [update - Hootsuite's site is unclear on whether the ads will be broadcast as updates to your followers, or if they will be integrated into the layout of Hootsuite, but not broadcast ]

4) The moment you make people feel disempowered, cheated or excluded, you’ve lost them.

5) Are you OK with sacrificing the good will of a chunk of people for the purpose of your monetization strategy? Scaling a business can be difficult – Hootsuite has to make money and to do that they have made the decision to sacrifice the good will of some people.  You can’t please everyone all the time and in your business you may have to make tough decisions about which people you want to continue to please and acknowledge that some will be upset. What could you do to minimize the growing pains?

6) Hootsuite are charging for the features that made it unique and awesome in the first place– now the free service is no better, and in some ways worse than a lot of other free apps. How can you monetize your business without diluting the unique thing that made it appealing in the first place? If you trade in your unique-ness then you’re giving people an open invite to look elsewhere.

What has been your experience with a service that has gone ‘freemium’? And what can you apply to your own business to continue to foster loyalty and good will amongst your customers?

*header image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jemsweb/19612191/

Custom columns for everything!
The columns layout of Hootsuite is extremely flexible and allows you to track a all sorts of information which is always at your fingertips and always updated. Create columns for your Twitter Lists, to track keyword searches, people you especially want to keep tabs on etc.

Mange multiple accounts
You can manage multiple social media and Twitter accounts through one Hootsuite login which makes keeping on top of everything so much easier.
You can also add other users as Admins or Editors of an account so that multiple people can help you manage the accounts you specify.

Tweet scheduling
This is probably one of the original Hootsuite features that set them apart. Ever wondered how some people just seem to be on Twitter ALL THE TIME….well they really might have the luxury of that much time to kill, or they could just be scheduling their tweets using this feature. A real godsend!

Automate Tweeting your blog posts
Using Hootsuite’s RSS feature you can automate updates whenever you post to your blog. Much better than using Twitterfeed’s glitchy service.

Update other social networks
Using Hootsuite you can also update your Facebook Pages and Profiles and LinkedIn. Hootsuite also connects with Ping.fm extending your reach even further. Wordpress.com and Myspace features are available in Beta.

Mobile Apps
iPhone users have enjoyed the luxury of Hootsuite’s iPhone app for a while. The Android app was just recently introduced as well. Still waiting on the Blackberry app though.

Easy tweeting with the Hootlet
Drag the hootlet to your browser bookmark bar and easily tweet out link to the page your on. Click the hootlet and a mini- Hootsuite window pops up. It’s the little things that make your life easier…

Upload pictures and files
Another recent update from Hootsuite means that you can upload files and pictures as you tweet with their new in-built functionality.

Time management is a huge factor in the success (or otherwise) of your social media marketing. As Hootsuite continues to add new features you can increasingly centralize your social media activity and do more and more with one Hootsuite account. More info on Hootsuite’s bells n’ whistles here, and at their blog.

What Twitter tool or other social media tools do you use, and why?