The networks we connect, and what each one can do

What each network actually does, at a glance

A row of logos says very little. What decides whether a tool is any use to you is what it does on the one network you care about, because "works with TikTok" can mean scheduling videos, or reading a follower count once a day, or both. This table separates the four capabilities that are not the same thing: publishing, measuring, advertising and automating direct messages.

Read it by rows rather than by columns. Instagram and Facebook are the only two that appear in all four, which is why they carry most of the work on almost any account. At the other end, Telegram, Discord, Snapchat and WhatsApp only publish: they are distribution channels rather than sources of data, and people connect them so they do not have to open four more apps every morning.

The ads column needs a clarification a table cannot give. There are five ad platforms and they do not map one to one onto the networks: Meta covers Instagram and Facebook together, LinkedIn, TikTok and Pinterest each stand alone, and the fifth is Google Ads, which is not the Google Business network even though both carry the same company name in front.

Publishing: characters, files and two extras not everyone has

When one piece goes out to several networks at once, the limit in charge is not the one on the network you write the most for. It is the tightest one in the group. That is why this second table is worth reading before you write rather than after: the characters each network accepts, how many files fit into a single post, and the two features only a few of them let an outside tool schedule.

Three things in that table change how content gets produced. The first is the distance between the extremes: Reddit takes 40,000 characters and Snapchat takes 250, so a caption written for the first is not a trimmed version of itself on the second, it is a different caption. The second is how rigid the file count is: YouTube, Pinterest and Snapchat accept exactly one, so the usual escape route of turning a photo session into a carousel does not exist there. The third is TikTok, which takes up to 35 files in a photo post, an afternoon of editing dressed up as one slot on the calendar.

The first comment, the place where most people park hashtags or the link so the caption stays clean, is only scheduled on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. On the other ten networks a person does that step by hand after publishing. Alt text is stored by six networks, with Pinterest capped at 500 characters against 1,000 everywhere else, and the remaining eight ignore it silently: the description is written once and travels with the image, but it only lands where somebody is listening.

To check a specific caption against several networks at once, the network limits calculator does exactly that with this same table underneath it, and the image dimensions plus the zones where each network's own interface covers your design are in the safe zones and sizes tool.

Measuring: six networks, and the gap in each one

Analytics arrive from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google Business. The other eight publish and send nothing back, and that is not a setting somebody forgot: their APIs do not expose account metrics to an outside tool at all. Connecting Discord will not give you a chart, and it is better to know that before building a report around it.

Inside those six, they do not all give the same thing either, and the detail matters more than the count of logos:

• The daily follower series exists on five of the six. Google Business is out, because it is a listing rather than a network with followers.
• Demographics come from Instagram and YouTube, and from nowhere else. Facebook sits in that "nowhere else", which surprises almost everybody. Each of the two also returns a different unit, accounts per bracket on Instagram and percentage of viewers on YouTube, so they cannot be added together.
• Every network has its own specific hole: Facebook returns no saves, TikTok returns no reach, saves or clicks, YouTube returns no impressions or reach, and LinkedIn returns no reach, views or saves.
• History starts on the day you connect the account, because the platforms do not keep it for third parties. Connecting in March does not draw January.

Replying: messages, comments and reviews too

The inbox does not treat direct messages and comments as two separate worlds: they are two kinds of the same object, and there is a third that almost no scheduling tool models at all, the review. Google Business comes in through that door, not as a conversation but as a rating, which means a local business stops having two places to watch with two different standards.

There is a clock over all of it: a message is marked overdue at 24 hours, which is the window Meta itself imposes for replying outside a template. And there is one limit worth knowing before you promise a client anything: outbound attachments work on Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and WhatsApp, and everywhere else the reply goes out as text. How that queue is organised when it arrives from fourteen places at once is covered on the social media inbox page.

Advertising: five platforms and one that is read only

The ads module brings performance from Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok and Pinterest into one place, with the same metrics named the same way across all of them, which is half the work of any campaign report. Google is different and it is worth saying plainly: that connection is read only, and what it adds beyond the report is the keyword planner and the search terms panel. Campaigns are created and edited in each platform's own manager.

That asymmetry is not a product whim. A panel that promises to create campaigns in five places ends up being a worse version of the original form in four of them, because every platform reshapes its targeting each season. What does survive the years is reading all five with one shared vocabulary.

Automating: two networks, and a condition that gets asked

Automated direct messages work on Instagram and on Facebook, and on nothing else. Three things can trigger one: a comment containing a keyword, a reply to a story, which is Instagram only, and a direct message.

There is a detail this category almost always gets told wrong, and here it is told straight: when a rule requires somebody to follow the account before the link is delivered, that is not checked by looking at the follower list, because the platforms do not open it to third parties. The person is asked and their reply is read. It is a conversational condition rather than a lookup, and anyone promising the second is describing something the API does not allow.

One network that is missing, and why we say so

X, formerly Twitter, is not there. It does not connect for publishing and it does not connect for ads, and this is not a list somebody left half finished: it is switched off in both directions. Saying that in a compatibility table costs a reader and saves a cancellation, which is a trade worth taking.

The same holds in reverse for the networks that are there. A connected network means you can schedule a piece, that it publishes itself at its hour and that whatever happens afterwards comes back to the same calendar, not that a button with its logo exists on some screen. That is where a calendar either saves you time or hands you one more copy to maintain, and the long answer is on the calendar and publishing page and in the guide on how often to post, which works out how many pieces a week the number of networks you just picked will really hold.