In a report earlier this month by EdgeRank Checker, found using 3rd party API’s on Facebook substantially decreases the likeliness of fan
engagement, some up to 80%.
We ran our analysis on 1,000,000+ Updates on 50,000+ Pages that influence over 1,000,000,000+ Fans. We took each individual post and analyzed the engagement (comment & likes) along with how many fans the Page had at the moment of updating. We then analyzed Facebook vs The Top 10 Other APIs (based on our sample size). We did a weighted average for the 3rd Party APIs, which resulted in 0.22% engagement. The result is a percentage that represents engagement per fan per post (on weighted average, of our Top 10 3rd Party API). Our sample size ranged per API, although we cut it off at the Top 10 APIs outside of Facebook.
via EdgeRank Checker
Users have been taking advantage of 3rd party API’s (like Hootsuite and Post Planner, among others) to schedule posts on Facebook, since Facebook does not have a scheduling feature.
Why are 3rd Party Apps Penalized?
EdgeRank Checker has a few theories including, the likeliness that the post is scheduled in advance and the content may not be timely or relevant any longer and content is not optimized for Facebook. Facebook penalizes these updates by giving less weight to the content, therefore it may not appear in the news feed of your fans, and Facebook also collapses the comments of these updates from 3rd party updates, so the fan engagement is believed to decrease since fans are not viewing the entire thread.
What Next?
EdgeRank Checker suggest publishing updates directly in Facebook because it is expected to increase fan engagement, which drives EdgeRank weight.
To view the entire EdgeRank Checker post, visit here.