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HootSuite, now at 5 million users, built its reputation as an enterprise tool to manage engagement on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ — with Twitter being an especially close partner for the Vancouver startup. But as it pursues its ambition to be a dashboard for business engagement across all of the web, and for more than just marketeers and social media managers, HootSuite is continuing to extend support to more sites.

Today it is the turn of the creative industries, as HootSuite adds Vimeo for video; self-hosted WordPress.org blogs; picture/video/audio sharing service Via.Me; Pinterest tracker Reachli, and freelance writer marketplace Scripted to its third-party App Directory, taking the total number of sites and services now supported to 41 usable by HootSuites Free, Pro, and Enterprise users.

The move is a sign of how HootSuite, which recently ramped up its user numbers by way of its acquisition of Seesmic, is trying to expand its customer base beyond usefulness for marketing and social media managers that use the platform to manage and monitor how their businesses or brands engage on sites like Twitter. These additions, HootSuite says, are being made specifically to cater to the “content creators” in its user base, which it says include artists, writers,
filmmakers, musicians, “and other creative spirits.”

“Social media and content creation, whether they be videos, photos or text, go hand-in-hand so adding these five great tools was a very natural progression for us,” HootSuite CEO, Ryan Holmes, said in a statement. “By integrating these platforms into our App Directory, we’ve facilitated content sharing through social channels while broadening the appeal and value of HootSuite’s dashboard for a large segment of our user base.”

It’s also an important move for HootSuite as it looks to further differentiate itself from the many other products out there selling themselves as enterprise social media dashboards. They include Spredfast, Sprinklr, SocialText and MediaFunnel.

Vimeo is not the first video site on the App Directory; YouTube was already there. And while WordPress is the first “traditional” blogging platform added to HootSuite’s list of integrations, there are others like Tumblr already on the support list. Similarly, Via.me complements other image-sharing sites like Instagram.

Reachli, however, appears to be the first app that will give HootSuite users the ability to upload and track images on the popular content-sharing site Pinterest.

Mark Holder, HootSuite’s director of integration partners, tells me that the newest list of apps was added after specific requests from users. But while the platform continues to grow — there are now 41 third-party ‘apps’ that can be integrated into HootSuite’s platform — HootSuite is not yet taking the step to make it possible for users to add whatever they want via APIs.

“We encourage third parties and companies to submit their ideas for apps they would like to integrate with the HootSuite App Directory platform,” he says. “[But] we do not allow for just any integration from any source, as our goal is to release high quality integrations that provide value to our customers.”

The expansion, we understand, will continue again by adding apps to cater to other groups of users such as those in financial verticals next.

For now, here’s a run-down of this latest list and what they do:

Vimeo: Users can upload, share and view videos through the HootSuite dashboard, as well as crosspost them to other places.

WordPress.org blogs: You can now create and edit pages on these from HootSuite’s dashboard, as well as moderate comments.

Via.Me: You can upload different media to your account, and follow your feed as well as those of others.

Reachli: You can pin pictures, create campaigns, view metrics on pins, and so on.

Scripted: Looks like the main use here is to help find people for your writing jobs, or to promote yourself for work.

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