You may have heard about the news lately: everyone in social media is crying about the end of the ability to repeat content on Twitter.
Repeating content is probably one of the (if not the only) reason users rushed to tools like Meet Edgar and SmarterQueue. Needless to say, there’s a lot of anxiety and frustration about these kinds of publishing tools.
But is this announcement really news?
Let’s look at the situation with a little more context.
Twitter Rules: What’s New, What’s Not (and Why it Matters)
On February 21, Twitter published a blog post called “Automation and the use of multiple accounts” which said that they now require developers (tools) to stop offering the possibility to post the same tweet on multiple Twitter accounts they control.
They justified this announcement by their willingness to fight spam and enforce their rules more strictly.
Before this blog post, tons of users with multiple Twitter accounts were regularly posting the same tweet on their accounts using various tools. Even Twitter’s own tool, TweetDeck, offered this feature.
After this blog post was published, everyone starting to shake with fear and ask Twitter “Can I still post the same tweet multiple times on one Twitter account“? Invariably, Twitter kept responding “this is also against the rules.”
Posting identical Tweets over multiple hours or days, or scheduling duplicate content for future publication, is still a violation of our rules.
Panic ensued.
Dozens and dozens of publishing recycling tools like Edgar and SmarterQueue soon announced that they’ve discontinued their “repeat” options for Twitter based on these “new” rules.
But this is where things get interesting.
These rules are NOT new at all.
Actually, they’ve been around since the early days of Twitter. Here’s a screenshot of the Twitter rules in July 2010:
As you can see yourself, the rules have always contained that same wording.
Truth be told — I was not fully aware of this myself until I used the Wayback Machine.
The rules have been around for a while — it’s just now that Twitter has decided to enforce them.
It feels pretty awkward for a large social network like Twitter to have had a rule like this one for so long, letting tools proliferate despite being solely built to repeat tweets and do or say nothing about it. Edgar alone had 7,000 clients a year ago. SocialOoomph probably has tens of thousands of thanks to its free plan.
The disturbing thing is that the exact same scenario applied to automatic DMs (direct messages) or tools that allow to follow/unfollow hundreds of users per week automatically. These behaviors have also been against the rules since 2010 as I read them. Still, as of today, hundreds of tools offer auto DMs and auto follow/unfollow features.
If that’s not confusing for the average, non-spamming Twitter user, I wonder what is!
You got the background. Now, let’s look at how tools that focused on repeating content are affected.
How Does This Impact Tools That Repeat Content?
Unfortunately for their users, Edgar has decided to shut down the repeat feature entirely. They are working on an alternative but there’s no release date.
Whatever alternative solution they come up with, it will never be the seamless, “set it and forget it” function that attracted so many users.
As for SmarterQueue, they chose a different path. They didn’t decide to shut down their repeat feature– instead, they decide to tweak it in a pretty unusual way.
They’re claiming that repeating a tweet is not OK but retweeting it over and over again is fine.
If you repeat content with them, the first tweet will be a normal tweet. All subsequent repeats will be a retweet of the first tweet.
I don’t know about you but I don’t feel like retweeting my own tweets again and again. It would feel like sharing my own posts on Facebook or LinkedIn. Weird.
On top of that, one could disagree with their interpretation of the Twitter announcement which was limited to retweeting from other Twitter accounts a tweet posted on one account.
I would be very worried that Twitter would consider these massive retweets as “duplicates” as well eventually.
Long story short, whatever solution they’ve chosen to implement, the initial value proposition is seriously limited now. This is why you should consider alternatives.
What Are Some Decent Alternatives to Meet Edgar and SmarterQueue?
Time to take a look at some alternatives!
Agorapulse is a comprehensive social media management tool. Unlike Edgar, SmarterQueue, and all the alternatives listed below, it goes beyond offering publishing features. It also provides full listening capabilities, engagement management, and reporting.
If you need to reply to the comments and private messages you receive on your Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and…
