Want to tweet while you sleep? | Hacker News Reader

Want to tweet while you sleep?

blog.bufferapp.com

13 pointsjoelg8719 comments

Interesting, but then, I don't really have the ability to follow conversations while I sleep, which means that one of the key selling points (of generating conversation) for the app kinda falls short for me.

I don't think a lot of people will care about your tweets if you spurt random details at scheduled times during the day. Twitter has become part broadcasting, part conversation (they're still trying to deal with that), but broadcasting without a sense of chronological context is weird - and possibly useless?

Hi, I'm the founder so this will be a little biased :)

I definitely agree that you can't respond immediately whilst you are sleeping, but it can still be effective if you are having a slightly more asynchronous conversation with people.

I have seen some people use Buffer in ways I did not expect. I originally thought it would mainly be used for broadcast, but one of the early paying users is actually using it a lot to ask questions about his particular niche (happens to be Gin).

Another thing I've started to realise is that it is much easier to react than it is to act. If you are sharing content fairly regularly using something like Buffer then it provides many opportunities to react with people who respond to the content shared.

I think, as with any tool, it can be used in an ineffective way. I would definitely not recommend people use Buffer and nothing else.

I get your points - they're valid. I'm a particular case on twitter because I have a very short username (@f) and actually miss many of my mentions when they happen at night (my account gets a huge amount of false positive mentions, some because of a regexp bug I reported to twitter years ago and that still hasn't been fixed). For people with very specific usernames (99.999% of users) that isn't an issue.

Mind you, with my comment I didn't meant to diss the service - It just doesn't fit my particular use. I'm glad it fits other people fine. Good luck with the product!

I personally try not to tweet in the half hour before I go to sleep, as I find otherwise that I get too anxious wondering what the response will be to my tweet. I once tweeted something that was seen as offensive on a corporate Twitter account, and ever since then, I've not felt entirely comfortable tweeting something and knowing for sure that it won't be taken the wrong way. At least if I am awake, I can take appropriate action (clarification or apologizing) if necessary.

It is true that I miss out on some of the interaction by doing much of my tweeting during the Australia-is-awake time of day. Most of the time, I'm okay with that. If I'm very keen on an international audience, I will tweet it twice or tweet it early morning here (afternoon in the US). But I make sure to always be awake when I do that. :)

People pay for something you can do with 'at' and 'curl'? I wish I was an entrepreneur.

Yes, because the average user knows what either of those are. Let alone the millions of businesses who might use this service.

Become an entrepreneur.

I like this a lot. I've used cotweet and hootsuite exclusively for the tweets scheduling feature (everything else is bloat to me) and always thought that somebody should turn this feature into a minimalist product.

I agree, I (with rather bad timing) I spent part of yesterday scheduling over a month's worth of tweets into CoTweet, the ability to not have to manually enter a date and time repeatedly would have saved a large amount of time.

However, after watching the video I wished. I don't want to enter my information without at first being able to see what the limitations would be on the free plan. The text on the site doesn't say anything about non-free plans/pricing other than that they exist. Careful scrubbing along the video does suggest its 2 a day (which would be fine for a free plan), with a max of 5 in the buffer which is so low as to completely ruin any plans of swapping it in for CoTweet and makes me much less willing to enter my email address.

May I suggest placing the plans/pricing information on the site? There is a page for it, but it appears to be mostly a duplicate of the homepage without any extra information.

Hi Mark, a fellow brummie, I think we might even have met - I did a bit of work for Andy Higgs not too long ago.

Firstly, my apologies for the lack of pricing information. There was pricing information until about 20 minutes ago, at which point having watched in real-time the bounces off the pricing page I wanted to try something drastic - just a big button. It was all I could do in the short time I had whilst I had some traffic I could see the effect with, but it certainly improved the signup rate. Whether I am now attracting people who will never pay is another matter.

Just so you know, the pricing was:

Free = 2 tweets per day, 5 in your Buffer Standard $5/m = 10 tweets per day, 50 in your Buffer Max $20/m = unlimited

Here is a screenshot - http://joelg.cc/3zUN

After some initial feedback, I am considering perhaps increasing the limits on the free plan so that people can get a real feel for the service. The paid versions also allow you to use your own Bit.ly details to track the clicks on your links.

My apologies again, but it was an experiment I had to try. I'd love to chat to you about how Buffer could be useful for you and answer any questions you have. Feel free to drop me an email at joel@bufferapp.com

I hate date dropdowns. I think an app like this can borrow a UI idea from teuxdeux.com and let users enter schedule tweets over a timesheet-ish grid.

btw, are you the guy from the famfamfam icons? You are like a legend man!

FYI - the page is now back to normal after my small experiment - http://bufferapp.com/pricing

Thanks! I used Hootsuite for a long time and I really enjoyed using Sharefeed too, but there came a point when I thought it could be more streamlined and that's when I had the idea for Buffer. I'm still at the fairly early stages, I launched this at the very end of November for the Startup Sprint, so I'd love to hear any suggestions or feedback you have.

Care to share details of (early) success? Are you getting signups? How are you promoting the site?

Hi! So far, I've had around 130 signups, 5 of which are paying. I launched last month with a tiny MVP, and built the features up around it as I learned there was demand. Since the launch, I've been making small fixes and adding a few tiny features, but the first paying customer after 4 days of launching gave me enough validation to focus more on the marketing side of things (as a developer it's not something I'm naturally drawn to do). I've been adding more information to the website based on some feedback, and I've been working on trying to help people "get it" quicker, since initially people were saying "why not just use Hootsuite" when Buffer is actually quite different. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them!

Click on the Plans and Pricing page. No mention of Plans nor Pricing other than saying I can try it for free (unless it's in the 2:50 long video that I don't want to watch). I see this happen a lot on these service-based sites and it never ceases to irk me.

I was doing a small experiment yesterday whilst I had traffic.

The page is now back to it's original design with the pricing take.

Sorry for the confusion :)

Your feedback box blocks two of the signup buttons. That's pretty bad. :)

Spontaneity. Buy it by the bag!

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