We've felt so inspired and delighted by the amazing videos being shared on social media. I'm happy to share with the ProductHunt community that we're launching Buffer for Video – it'll be the the first product to allow native video scheduling to all the big social media networks. So: upload once, share everywhere.
@jamesburton69 Great one James, we're hoping that Instagram will open up a publishing API in the future to allow posting to Instagram. Agree this would be a killer feature if we're able to gain access in the future. :)
@jamesburton69@joelgascoigne I hope Instagram never opens up the API to publishers. The lack of automated publishing makes it almost the only authentic social network left - the others all having been taken over by marketers (like me).
Hey PH!
Excited to hear your feedback on this! I'll give you some of the backstory behind building this one. :)
One of the reasons we feel this is hugely important right now is because of the explosion of video (which I'm sure y'all know very well!). A few stats we've collected:
• The number of videos in Facebook feeds has grown by 360%
• 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter
• In the U.S., people are posting 94% more videos to Facebook
• 50% of Americans who use Facebook daily watch at least 1 video every day
Back in January, we noticed that uploading just one Buffer video to our Facebook page resulted in one of our most engaged posts within just a few minutes of uploading.
We did some digging in our data and discovered that nearly 3% of all links shared on Buffer were YouTube links. That alone felt like a strong validation that people wanted to share video content.
When we had built out video for Facebook, we decided to keep going and build out video for all the social media platforms. We had heard from customers that uploading videos can be a bit tedious and wanted to offer the ability to upload a video once, on your schedule, and share it to multiple social media networks at the time that’s right for you and your audience.
How it works: Just drop a video into the Buffer composer window and Buffer will do the rest! Buffer for Video works with mp4, mov, and avi video files of up to 1 gigabyte. On Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, the uploaded video will appear totally native. On Pinterest and LinkedIn, Buffer will add a link that directs viewers to our hosted web player.
Some of us will be hanging around all day today and we'd love to answer any questions and hear what you think!
@courtneyseiter Hey y'all, I wanted to share the answers to a few Q&A items that we've heard from our community. Would love your help adding any new thoughts here; we're keen to keep going and make Buffer for Video even better!
What plans is Buffer for Video included with?
All plans!
Are any other social tools doing this?
None that we know of; we would love anyone else's insight here!
Is the video posted on Facebook and Twitter really native video?
Yes! On Facebook, it will be a native video. For Twitter videos under 30 seconds (Twitter's max) it will be a native video. For videos longer than that, it will be displayed as Twitter video card.
What size video is accepted?
The range is from 0B to 1GB.
What types of video files are accepted?
We accept the following video types: mp4 - mov - avi
What analytics does Buffer provide for each network?
At the moment we're providing the same analytics we typically provide for other post types, including like/share/comment/retweet/+1. We haven't quite focused on any specific video-based analytics like watches. We'd love to hear about the video metrics you'd most like to see!
How do the thumbnails work? Can I add a custom thumbnail?
They're generated every 10 seconds of video. We're exploring custom thumbnails right now, so possibly very soon!
Can you upload video to Buffer on mobile also?
Coming soon! I know we want to support this quickly. Thinking it'll be part of the v5.0 version of the iOS app in the next month or so.
@courtneyseiter A little late here, but LOVE buffer for video. I would also love to be able to allow our team and users of http://rendrfx.com to be able to upload/schedule videos to buffer directly from our platform. I checked out the api docs and didn't see anything for uploading video. Is there any plans for this in the roadmap? Any recommended short term solutions? Thanks. Really excited about being able to quickly create a fleet of videos for social on our platform and them queue them up via Buffer!!! :)
@bentossell Thanks Ben, we're super pumped to get this one out there! Feels like video is taking over on social and uploading them in all the places is hard - hope this saves a lot of time! :)
This is an awesome update. Any idea if we can buffer animated GIFs now or will be able to at some point? At least Twitter converts them to video now, so slightly related. I'll have a try tonight - fingers crossed it works :-)
Congrats Joel, Leo and the team. It's been amazing watching the Buffer journey and how the product is making content sharing easier, quicker and more effective.
Video is an incredibly persuasive form of content; and I am guessing this opens the door for short (or long) high quality videos to be shared easily, without relying on one particular platform. Love it :)
@elbahnasy Thanks so much! Totally agree on video's persuasiveness. We're doubling down on video in our marketing as well. It's fascinating to see social media evolve so quickly!
Congrats to the Buffer team on another great product. I remember @joelgascoigne mentioning that video was coming in the #Bufferchat AMA he did from Iceland but didn't realize it was this soon. Look forward to checking it out and using it.
I had the pleasure of meeting Leo. I have tremendous respect for him and the team – giving back to the community in tangible ways, leading by example, spreading positivity, and keeping their nose to the ground building a great product that solves a real pain point for so many people. Kudos, and congrats on the launch!
this looks really awesome.
one of the considerations that I'd have looking at the implementation though is:
if I have a YouTube video that I want to go viral, if I normally share that video on Twitter, Twitter views would count towards my YouTube video view # count. But with this implementation the views # for each platform would be counted separately.
I guess the benefits of having the video auto-play on Facebook (which doesn't auto play youtube videos) might offset that though.
I like that you guys included examples of the facebook and twitter implementations; it could be great if you could also show how they look on google+ and pinterest.
@_jacksmith Hey Jack, great thoughts here! I think we'd love to add YouTube in the future so the flow you mention would be possible, that would be really useful. There are some examples of how this looks on Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn at the blog post here: https://blog.bufferapp.com/buffe...
Buffer is one of my most valued tools & it just get's better & better! Video is definitely on the increase in terms of social media so being able to upload a video & share everywhere is just awesome!
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