Tech Stuff: Buffer

And this is another new thing. That's two in one week! More importantly, having five sections to the blog means I can have something to post every day of the week. We'll see if it holds or not, but I'm hoping it will.

Anyways. Thursdays are now for reviewing some technological widget, gizmo, gadget, or other thing with an awesome name, description, or acronym.

My very first review is for a service called Buffer. This review will cover only what I have experienced so far with the service, as I have only used it for a short period of time and it has a paid portion that I will probably never bother to access.

Buffer allows you to post to Twitter or Facebook with a schedule, and helps to provide feedback on how viewed the post was by your friends/followers.

So, why should you use this? Well, obviously it's somewhat useful to be able to write something now and post it later. However, this functionality doesn't seem particularly amazing for Facebook or Twitter, which are usually for posting things that are happening now or are largely unrelated to timing at all.

However, there is one case I can think of where it is supremely useful - in conjunction with another service that allows you to schedule posts for the future. For instance, Blogger allows me to schedule a blog post for an arbitrary future date and time. Using Blogger and Buffer in conjunction, I can setup a blog post for the future, and simultaneously setup a Facebook or Twitter post promoting that blog post to occur right after the post itself is made.

Kind of neat, huh?

In addition to this, Buffer allows you to track how many people viewed your post and how well it was received, albeit not well - at least in the free version. For Facebook, you can easily see how many people commented on or liked your status, and can experiment with different posting times to see which yield the greatest result in terms of viewership.

(Keep in mind that Facebook's API allows you to track a wealth of information about any post, so this is kind of paltry. Still, it's simple and helps you get the job done.)

One area of the service that I have yet to fully explore is extensions. Taking a quick look over that portion of the service, it seems Buffer can be used on a lot of different devices as of the moment, and can also be used as a browser extension for quick and easy sharing. I'm sure there are lots of other things sitting around in there, as well, so I'd encourage you all to go and take a look.

So, yeah, new thing number two for the week. If any of you have feedback, insults, suggestions, comments, or ideas on things I should or should not write about, put them down below. I even promise that commenting will not automatically put out an assassination contract on you! Can you think of a better deal? I certainly can't.