Blue Gypsy Inc. Blog

Okay so part two. While everyone else seemed thrilled to see HTML5 yesterday, I wasn't like most waking up to a very different owl.

I didn't have the time, I had 20 things on my plate and I was, as usual, trying to figure out how to cram 30 hours of work into about 17 waking hours.

I was in no mood for one of the major tools I use for work to be changed. As it is, when you are doing a targeted twitter campaign *right* for a client you need to do your research. It's not just about pushing out a message. "Hey buy our crap" "Hey buy our crap" "Hey buy our crap" and it's certainly not about clumping 10 twitter updates together in two minutes. (If you do this, it's annoying to all those who's streams you are peeing in)

I actually search topics and people talking about certain things and try to engage them in a conversation on twitter. Making their messages and ideas just as important (if not more important) than what I'm trying to sell.

So as I woke up ready to schedule a few retweets for the day that were actual interactions, not messages about my client's product. I was looking for great things I could retweet that would be of interest to both my followers and engage those who are tweeting. To my utter stress levels hitting above the roof before 7 am, Hootsuite had removed the ability to:

1. Hit retweet
2. See it all pretty in the window
3. Make my cute little comment
4. Schedule it

Instead they wanted to do exactly what twitter.com does which was just send it out into the world! Ummmmmm last time I checked that's why I don't use twitter.com.

I didn't have time to figure it out, but throughout the day I received other indicators that I wasn't the only "moron" who thought this was a stupid idea.

By the time the whirl wind of activity died down for the day and I could sit and concentrate on a tool that was on autopilot for me, like breathing, before, I started to unravel the mystery by googling. (Thank god for google....but still really 15 or so minutes in my day to re-figure something out that I already didn't have to think about is not a great addition to my stress levels)

I read people saying go into settings....well great I didn't see where settings were anymore on my damn hootsuite. Weren't they always at the bottom??? Google 5 more minutes....THE DAMN OWL! Sure it's very intuitive when you have used a tool for a while one way, for you to just KNOW that you should click on the owl to find settings? Come on...was there a memo about this that I just missed when I opened my work station at 5:30am?

Okay so if you were like me and wanted to change back to "Classic" i.e. more user friendly, version of retweeting on Hootsuite you need to:

1. Click the owl
2. Go to settings
3. Go to preferences
4. Uncheck the box Use Twitter Web Retweets
5. Hit Save Preferences
   

I know, I know I'm making a big deal out of this but I am of the mindset that if it ain't broke don't fix it. When I worked as a galley cook on a boat in the Cayman Islands the kitchen didn't make sense to me I wanted to rearrange it. But there were 6 other crew members on the boat that knew exactly where everything lived. On a boat you quickly learn that everything goes back to the same place it came out of whether it's a critical piece of equipment or a wooden spoon.

Stop rearranging things on social media if it isn't necessary...Hootsuite, facebook, you know who you are.