Can Someone Explain the Difference?

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’ve had issues posting to Facebook reliably through every third party app except TweetDeck. While I really like the product of HootSuite, they have a major issue with posting consistently and frequently to Facebook. I’ve been around and around with HootSuite and Facebook and have posted many of those conversations on this blog. I’m happy to report that I appear to finally have answers and workaround for these issues.

The issue, as we thought all long, is Facebook. There are many posts online where you can find that Facebook limits posts from third party apps by both app and person. That means they throttle the app (HootSuite) and the user (me) based on all aggregated activity from both and based on interaction both receive. So, if I’m posting a lot from HootSuite to Facebook and am not getting much interaction in terms of comments and likes then I’m subject to being limited. I have noticed the more interaction I receive the longer I can post before I am cut off.

However, it isn’t just up to me. In their futile effort to prevent spam by punishing everyone else the Facebook algorithm also looks at all content coming from HootSuite so I could be limited quickly even if I haven’t posted in a while because of the activity of other HootSuite users.

This explains the issues with HootSuite and with several other Twitter apps that also post to Facebook that I’ve tried. Tweetings, Tweetcaster, all of them, except TweetDeck. For whatever reason the current web app of TweetDeck, the old Adobe Air version, as well as their existing iPhone and iPad apps don’t have this limit. TweetDeck must connect to Facebook through a different API or they must have an exclusive agreement where Facebook doesn’t throttle their API. I’ve posted to Facebook hundreds of time an hour from TweetDeck without any issues where with HootSuite, I’d have been throttled after 6 posts.

So can anyone explain the difference? Does anyone know why TweetDeck appears to be exempt from Facebook’s policies?

At least we have the answers and for now, we still have TweetDeck so you can post as much as you want to both Twitter and Facebook without fear of being limited. Otherwise, you can always post to Facebook directly from the web or their apps as those obviously have no such limits.