What Happened to the Buffer API?

The Buffer API has long been a social media favorite, but was deprecated in 2019.

I’ve been an avid user of Buffer and the Buffer API for social media posting, and to this day, I love the dashboard’s clean interface and simple workflow. When I started my previous company many years ago, I had a plan to start each morning by researching content material, writing a few posts, and scheduling these posts to be published at a later time. No problem, right?

The “daily…” plan quickly slowed down as I wrote these manual posts. Either you were distracted by other priorities as the company grew, or you were lazy thinking of new posts every day. Even so, social media engagement has gone down as they post less.

However, I realized why I care about my content because users have already asked for an easy way to create and share content such as images and videos on my platform. own Social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. How do I allow my users to authorize their social accounts and then schedule posts and inevitably get analytics and comments on their behalf? Why, the Buffer API!

Every founder and consumer-facing business leader knows how important social media is to brand growth. Social media is an extension of a company’s identity in a way that is personal to the community. By using my social media accounts in a way that no other medium allows, I create conversations with users that are so important to building my brand and reputation. If you have a platform, agency or CMS, it is especially important to allow users to post directly from your platform. When asked to download content and go to their respective social sites, they usually do not do so.

As with most things in life, it takes real effort if it’s worth doing.

Then I read the article I was still looking for, which “of course” hit you over the head moment. You can post to your users’ social accounts via the API right from your app.. Instead of asking users to download content, you can automate the entire process. All it needed was an API that could send posts.

Back to Buffer to use the API and bam!

this!

in short 7 yearsOr perhaps in technology for many years buffer We moved from providing APIs to removing APIs.

So what happened to Buffer’s API?

based on e-mail Loomly is from Buffer. Buffer and its users appear to be having problems with the social network.

We have decided that certain uses of the Buffer API can no longer be permitted, particularly where posts go beyond the express agreements they have with social networks.

Okay. But simple abuse of posting happens whether it’s manual or automated. You can also build failsafes, thresholds and other protection mechanisms.

Then we come to:

After auditing existing API integrations, we have decided to revoke access to third-party tools that provide functionality similar to Buffer’s core product. For example, scheduling social media posts directly through the social network API. These products can no longer use the Buffer API.

Aha! Companies that basically use Buffer as a publishing proxy didn’t want to anymore because Buffer seemed to narrow it down to media agencies. In this context, the strategy of de-emphasizing APIs makes sense. After all, most agencies have teams of people who spend all day creating, manually scheduling, and publishing content.

It’s a pity that Buffer dropped the API because it lacks a good social API solution and is really necessary if you want to automate social media.

But that’s why Ayrshare’s social media API exists. Together with our co-founders, we first built Ayrshare and then enabled users to automate posting to social media networks through an API. See what a great Buffer API alternative we are and how we protect our customers with proprietary technology Social Post Verification System.

best,

Jeffrey Bourne

Co-Founder, Ayrshare