Bon APPetit

November 24, 2013 03:39 pm | Updated 03:39 pm IST - chennai

Whatever you use Facebook and Twitter for, their biggest plus is that they make it easy for you to stay connected with your friends about all kinds of things as well as find news. Almost all news publishers online have a Facebook or Twitter account, and are doing well to leverage the ‘social news’. And when they share links, they try to maximise their traffic on it.

However, with continuous sharing, it becomes apparent that some posts do well in the morning on weekdays, say, or in the evening on weekends and so on. If you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account built on sharing interesting stuff with people, you’ll know what this is about. So, here are three apps to help you navigate these streams.

Buffer

Buffer is simple, easy to use, and is available on Android and iOS devices and as a plug-in on Google Chrome. When you’re on a page and have found something interesting to share, simply click on the Chrome plug-in icon or share it through Buffer.

On Buffer, you can link to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Path and App.net accounts. Now, the best part is, no matter when you share your posts, Buffer will only update your accounts on these platforms according to time-slots you prefer, that is when you know most of your readers will be on that platform. You could also create an account with Buffer and access your post’s analytics, using that data to share more and share better.

IFTTT

IFTTT stands for ‘If This, Then That’, and it is Microsoft’s on{x} for sharing. It’s an incredibly simple sharing system using what are called recipes. Each recipe consists of whatever you’re sharing, a trigger, and an action. If a trigger’s set off — such as if it’s 4 pm or if a particular blog’s been updated, the ‘If This’ part of the recipe is activated. The rest of the action depends on whatever ‘Then That’ you’ve defined.

Where IFTTT gets ahead of Buffer is you can link to, or link through, 75 apps or platforms. That’s right, you can do something like if you publish a blog post, you can update Twitter, Facebook, your private Path account, send someone a GTalk notification and also ping the hundreds of people who might be following you via RSS. You can even update your Dropbox or Google Drive vaults without an extra click.

ReadKit

If you’re big on reading and would like to keep all your reading synced across Readability, Pocket, Delicious, Pinboard, Feedly, NewsBlur or whatever other RSS reader or read-it-later app you’re using, ReadKit is something you should check on.

On the downside, it is available only for Apple’s devices at the moment. The idea is you basically have all your reading material in one place, which you can keep updated, share from, bookmark (or import bookmarks to), sort and email from, all the time enjoying the look and feel of something that looks like Readability’s reading interface. And unlike Buffer or IFTTT, it comes at a cost: $6.99 (about Rs. 440). But that’s a worthwhile onetime cost if, again, you’re big on reading.

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