It seems simple to implement, and it might lead to more engagement (for the platforms that care about that).
Instead, people rely on third-party tools to accomplish scheduling on Reddit and Instagram. Why is that? Is there some issue I’m not considering?
Probably because 99% of users won’t need such a feature.
scheduling
What do you mean by that?
Gmail has something similar, instead of the post going out when you click post you can set it to go live at a certain time
I know friends have used the third party schedulers when promoting events on Instagram, where the posts needed to go out at a certain time (ex. releasing tickets at a certain time for fairness). Others might want to post right around when people are likely to be looking at their phones.
There is also a similar service for Reddit, and now for Lemmy: https://schedule.lemmings.world , where mods can schedule reoccurring posts (ex. TV shows, weekly events)
Personally, I’d like to sit down and prep some posts, then have them go out slowly. Rather than all at once spamming people’s feeds. schedule.lemmings.world works great, and I posted this to see if there’s any reason to not integrate it into main Lemmy
If you have a business account/page on Meta, you can schedule posts for both facebook and instagram. I believe you can also schedule tweets., although not sure if you can do it on a personal/individual account. Those are limited to photos/videos/reels though, not events or something.
It’s built-in on reddit, I’ve used it before. It might only be available on modposts, though.
Most social media platforms make money when you actively engage with them. Having scheduled posts removes that from them. So now they have less revenue and they have to spend more money maintaining a feature. As such there’s no incentive for them.
My guesses would be:
- If you’re able to use tools to just post at a certain time, you might be less likely to engage with the platform.
- They can upsell you on their paid API (which is probable how corporations would prefer to operate anyways).
Some social media has a schedule post for business accounts. You have to pay a certain fee to be a business account. So you can do it but you have to pay. The found that people are willing to pay for the feature so they won’t give it away for free
They want you going to the site actively every time you post so you’re more likely to engage with other content.
I think Tumblr has scheduling. Not sure since haven’t tried myself.
There’s a cost to maintaining a feature. Unless a certain percentage of users would actively use the feature and it would improve your KPIs more than another feature that could be implemented in the same period with the same maintenance cost, it’s not worth it and will never be prioritized.
