Buffer schedules 100,000 tweets – I'll tell you about it later

Buffer, the app that makes it easy to schedule tweets, has announced that its users have sent 100,000 tweets in just four months since launch.

That’s a number, however, that’s hard to put into context perhaps, given that the service actively encourages more tweeting, albeit in a way that’s designed to annoy your followers less, but it does indicate traction for the bootstrapped startup. In addition, founder Joel Gascoigne candidly tells TechCrunch Europe that Buffer amassed 1,000 users in its first three and a half months and is currently adding around 100 users a day, while to date the service claims 5,400 users in total, 175 of which are paying customers.

Competing with other Twitter apps that enable individual users or teams who manage accounts on behalf of brands to cue tweets for future publication, such as Hootsuite, Social Oomph or CoTweet, Buffer says it’s different in that there is no need to schedule each individual tweet. Instead, a number of fixed timeslots can be setup so that “buffered” tweets go out to followers at specific times of the day. The idea being that in this way an account doesn’t overwhelm its followers – leading to more unfollows – and instead can spread or target tweets across timezones, while at the same time the natural process of composing tweets or sharing content isn’t interrupted.

In terms of business model, Buffer is a classic freemium play. A basic version is free, limited to a set number of cued tweets, while paid-for versions exist offering an increased buffer, starting at $5 per month.