Muxi co-founder Betrand Besse claims that there is still an opportunity in the business networking side of things simply because LinkedIn acts more as a place for your resume than for true networking. Besse states that LinkedIn doesn’t really have a true “Social” component, compared to services like Facebook, and Muxi hopes it can offer the best of both worlds. Of course Facebook has also made attempts at getting some of the business crowd, so even the business social niche is becoming rather full.

LinkedIn’s primary ‘social aspect’, beyond resume-type profiles, are the LinkedIn Groups feature, but even though LinkedIn has 691,000 members, the groups portion only gets about 60-70 posts each week.

Muxi promises to offer something that is very professionally-aimed, yet has all the social tools you’d expect from a true social networking platform. Today the app component of the new social service is launching in the US, but it will only offer it through invite-only mode for now.

Muxi makes use of a system that includes “fraternities”, which is its version of groups, and even gives its users Greek letters that indicate their status based on how much they participate and offer to the community. In total there are 40 fraternities which allow you to share your professional information, ask questions, network, post jobs and more. Muxi also has integration features that mix in with Facebook and Twitter. You can also set your personal contacts separately from your professional or group contacts when it comes to following them or getting updates.

This seems like an interesting enough idea, but it’s a tough market and even former kings like MySpace have quickly seen their star dim in recent times. Does Muxi have what it takes to establish itself in an already highly competitive social market? If Muxi truly gains any ground, will LinkedIN step up its social aspects more or will it too go the way of MySpace?

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The regular old Twitter client on your Android phone is fine for basic updates, but what if you’re using social networks for a small business and you need more features? What if you need to handle multiple accounts and manage different teams of workers? Thankfully, there are more than a few alternatives out there.

Sprout Social has been around as a web-based desktop client for some time now, they’ve also offered an iOS app. Now, they’ve updated us with an Android application to let you better “manage your social media on the go.” This is a companion app for users of Sprout Social, so you’ll need to start with an account there first.

A Sprout Social Overview

It’s clear right from the beginning that Sprout Social is catering itself to business owners, particularly those where there are multiple team members working on the same social media accounts. The core service is designed to give you more information for sales, marketing, and support, as well as that collaborative experience for everyone on your social media team.

You can manage mutliple social media accounts, like Facebook and Twitter, complete with analytics, monitoring, top performing posts, publishing options, discovery features, task assignment, CRM, and location information. That last bit is interesting, because you can keep tabs on Foursquare locations for check-in data and trends, which is great for brick and mortar businesses.

Navigating the Mobile App

But what about the new Android app?

Everything is laid out in a relatively easy to understand manner, allowing you group together different Twitter accounts into workgroups. From there, you can see the main home feed as well as access your sent updates, look at tasks, and so on. Everything that you’ve come to expect from a Twitter client is here, though I would have liked the ability to “swipe” from column to column rather than simply tapping on the icons near the top.

When composing a new message you can choose which social media accounts you’d like to use (that’s the left column). There are also options to attach images (it defaults to a low-res image to yfrog) and schedule your tweets into the future. Unfortunately, just like HootSuite, there does not appear to be a way to check your scheduled tweets from within the mobile app; you have to go to the web-based desktop client to see that.

The tasks and statistics are available to you, though, so you can see how many clicks and retweets you are getting from your sent messages, for instance. The team management function is great too, since you can assign tasks to team members for following up.

The Smart Inbox

The primary column in the Sprout Social Android app is the Smart Inbox. Again, clearly designed with businesses in mind, this allows you to monitor everything that has to do with your company and your brand from one convenient location. The criteria can be customized, but it effectively lets you see all the mentions and activity related to you across mutliple services.

For instance, I named the workgroup “Mobile Magazine” and linked up my @dotcompho Twitter account. As you can see in the screenshot, it picked up the tweets that mentioned “Mobile Magazine,” as well as the mention directed at @dotcompho. This one inbox gives you an “at a glance” survey of how the social web is responding to your brand(s).

How Much Does It Cost?

Ah, there’s the rub. While the Android app is free, using Sprout Social is not.

Each of these comes with a free 30 day trial with no credit card required, but there is no “free” plan that can be used with Sprout Social. The plans range from $9/month to $899/month, offering anywhere from 10 social profiles to unlimited profiles. The cheapest plan supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Reader, while the higher end includes Foursquare and Google Analytics, as well as local search, task assignments, Facebook tabs, branded reports, and more.

I’m not sure that Sprout Social is quite the right fit for the regular old consumer, but its robust feature set — particularly with monitoring and analytics — and could prove invaluable to businesses of all sizes.

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