Buffer tweet scheduler now included in Vienna RSS reader

Scheduling and sharing your tweets via your RSS reader just got a whole lot easier, provided you’re using Buffer and Vienna. The team at the popular RSS reader Vienna has recently announced the public release of its version 2.6, and have included the ability to send your favorite news directly to your Buffer with the click of a button.

If you’re not familiar with Buffer, in a nutshell, the service allows Facebook updates and tweets to be scheduled and released in a timed manner. Vienna RSS is a stand-alone RSS/Atom reader specifically designed for Mac OS X. I like to think of Vienna as an RSS feed reader that picks up in organization and style where many web-based readers drop the ball.

With the built-in addition of Buffer to Vienna, the two have effectively removed the cumbersome step of copy/paste the item from Vienna to a browser, and then either clicking the Buffer browser extension button, or pasting directly to Buffer via the web interface. Nothing earth shattering, but mighty convenient for both power and non-power users of either or both services.

The Vienna integration is yet another announcement from Buffer, as co-founders Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich appear to be on a feature tear. The duo have added full analytics for all buffered tweets, Google Reader integration, Facebook integration, an Android app, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox extensions, integrations with StawberryJam and Refynr, and just a minor announcement about 1 million tweets ‘Buffered’. In other words, Buffer seems to be popping up in a number of familiar places these days, and the team shows no signs of slowing.

Picking up on this push, I spoke to Leo Widrich about Buffer’s 2012 outlook.

“Integrating with Vienna marks a step in a new and obvious direction for Buffer. We are transforming it from an app into a new sharing standard,” says Widrich. “We found that Buffering your every day reads has proven to be much more beneficial than purely tweeting them out or posting to Facebook. It creates a much more streamlined experience for your friends and followers, gives you more clicks and reach and helps you use Social Media more efficiently.”

I’ve personally done a bit of testing on the Buffer front as well, and while not quite scientific, I did notice an increase in retweets and followers while using Buffer over a 1 week period. Conversely, the following week, I did only “live” updates, received no RT’s and even lost a few followers. Dan Zarrella of Hubspot has done similar research in tweeting over time, and Michael Brito from Edelman Digital shares his thoughts on Buffer. Likewise, the Buffer team did some of their own research and found that users can expect (on average):

• Increased clicks on links they posted by 200% within two weeks of using Buffer
• The average amount of retweets to double
• An increase in follower count by 104 followers within a three week average

Yes, yes…I can see the comment stream flooding in right now regarding the “automated” and bot theories. And to be fair, 99% of them I agree with. However, founders Leo and Joel have made it abundantly clear that Buffer is not meant to be an RSS bot feed, nor is it designed to replace the human behind the account at any point. The way I see it, Buffer is a simple to use a gateway that conveniently helps users from flooding their followers, fans, and friends with all of the “Oooo…this is neat. Share!” and “I know I just sent something out, but this is wicked awesome! Share again! moments.