Breaking News: Mass Planner Has Closed Down!
I've never actually got round to using Mass Planner yet myself, but I have referred a few people to it as an affiliate. I was planning to start using it in the future once I finally get to grips with social media.
But today I saw this email:
It turns out that Instagram forced them to shut down.
BLIMEY!
If Instagram has the power to close down Mass Planner, does this potentially mean the end for other social media automation tools too?
Think about it. Instagram is owned by Facebook, which is the 3d largest internet company, with 27 billion dollars in renue last year. My guess is, if they don't want automation tools to exist, they won't exist.
But none of this should really come as a surprise to us internet marketers. It's really no different than when Google de-indexes a bunch of websites or hurts their rankings with an algorithm update. The world's richest companies have the power and incentive to makes these kinds of moves because their success relies on it.
So this leads me to think that social media automation tools are now going the same way as backlink automation tools. The "Powers That Be" don't want us to use them, so we should probably stop using them.
What do you think?
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Any time a tool relies on another website that it doesn't own there's always the risk that the tool will be forced to shutdown. Mass planner might seem awesome to the people who are using it, but the Instagram staff don't see it that way. If you were on a dating site would you like to have bots interact with you? It kind of defeats the purpose. I'm assuming it's the same thing with Instagram. What's the use in using Instagram if there are just a bunch of bots running the show?
It is a catch twenty two , Instagram is s business , it needs to protect its position and to create an environment that enhances it's users experience. It is not so much about the automation tools but more about how some folks use them. At the end of the day spam is spam. As a side note our box's are full of automation tools they are launched weekly across all social media platforms. So they will be on the market in some form it is business after all, just one cents
Thanks Marcus .. My thinking is that social media automation tools are dead and have been for sometime and this action by Instagram was predictable and expected. Not saying I agree with it of course. Cheers, William.
Disappointing for anyone trying to make money online with more than one site. I know there are other planners out there like Hootsuite, etc. Hope this does not turn out to be a trend! Alanna
Well, the thing is, there are different levels of automation.
For example, the company I do some work for, I use Hootsuite which enables me schedule social media posts. However, I still need to manually choose which things to schedule. Compare this to Mass Planner, which would pretty much automate everything. You could just set it to automatically retweet anything, follow and unfollow people, and automaticlly post to Facebook groups, among many other functions. It meant that Mass Planner was mostly doing everything.
It's possible automation software wil.stop as hearing more about it on fb and instagram. Hope that not the case, as I have automation tools but it people who abuse and spam
Never heard of it, but thank you. I never liked the concept of automation tools for social media so this sounds like a good news.
Well, the thing is, there are different levels of automation.
For example, the company I do some work for, I use Hootsuite which enables me schedule social media posts. However, I still need to manually choose which things to schedule. Compare this to Mass Planner, which would pretty much automate everything. You could just set it to automatically retweet anything, follow and unfollow people, and automaticlly post to Facebook groups, among many other functions. It meant that Mass Planner was mostly doing everything.
I understand, but where is human contact in all this, machines 'like' what other machines put on the media, and vice versa. What a great business. I was disgusted with all the concept first time I heard about it. Blogged about it earlier.
Exactly. At least with Hootsuite I am personally seeing everything I choose to retweet or share. But if it's a situation where the software is doing everything, it's pointless really.
It was a similar thing back when everyone was using backlinking software. That software would take an article, spin it into loads of variations that don't read properly, then automatically submit them to hundreds if not thousands of article directories that nobody ever visits, just to get the backlinks.
These days Paul blogged about some scheme which he is the member of, and mentioned thousands of backlinks. It must be something of the type you described.
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Jimbo told me about it last night :(
I bet he's pissed off. He's been raving on about Mass Planner for ages.
But to be honest, this is what happens when you try to build your business on sneaky tricks. This is what I've been saying since I came here. I learned years ago that using sneaky tools like this is not a good way to build a business. Sooner or later the big guns put a stop to it.
This is the reason Kyle and Carson have taken the approach they have with the WA training. They are trying to keep us all on the straight and narrow.