What I learned building a social media publishing platform that connects to multiple APIs
When I started building VidSyndicate, I thought the difficult part would be writing the integrations.
It wasn't.
The bigger challenge has been getting permission to actually use them.
VidSyndicate started as a fairly simple idea: upload content once, prepare it for different social networks, and publish it across multiple platforms without spending an hour jumping between websites.
Then I started connecting the APIs.
Some platforms were surprisingly straightforward. Pinterest and LinkedIn were relatively painless. YouTube was also one of my first approvals and initially went smoothly.
Then I added more advanced functionality.
I've now been through more than 10 Meta App Reviews and roughly the same number of TikTok reviews. When I added YouTube Live, the approval process suddenly started feeling a lot more like Meta.
There have been rejected screencasts, requests for additional explanations, test accounts, OAuth verification, permissions that depend on other permissions, and features that worked perfectly in development but couldn't be released until somebody at the platform approved them.
Eventually, though, the approvals started adding up.
And that taught me something important about building a product that depends on third-party platforms:
The API documentation is only half the integration.
You also have to design around permissions, platform policies, rate limits, review processes, changing requirements, and what happens when a connection stops working.
That has influenced how I'm building VidSyndicate now.
Instead of simply trying to support as many networks as possible, I'm focusing more on making each integration useful and reliable. Publishing is only one part of it. Scheduling, analytics, comments, connection health, retries, and eventually deeper workflow automation are just as important.
The goal is still the same one I started with:
Create the content once and spend less time distributing it.
VidSyndicate is still very early, and I'm learning quite a bit as I build it in public.
If you've built a SaaS that depends heavily on third-party APIs, I'd be interested to hear which platform gave you the biggest headache.
10+ Meta reviews and roughly the same with TikTok is quite a journey. Curious which platform has been the biggest headache so far.
For me, it’s not really the platforms themselves—it’s learning how to make the screencast clearly demonstrate each permission being used. When I first started, I thought some things were “implied,” but to an auditor, they aren’t. I had to learn how to present each feature so they can literally check every box during the review.
I still get rejections from time to time, but I’ve never been told a flat-out “no.” Usually it’s just figuring out exactly what they want demonstrated, fixing it, and resubmitting.
That makes sense. The review process sounds like its own product problem sometimes. I’d be curious what you’ve learned about getting those approvals through efficiently.
My experience has been that keeping each review focused on just one or two permissions makes the process a lot easier. Trying to get five or ten permissions approved at once creates a lot more opportunities for something to get questioned or rejected.
If you have the runway to roll features out gradually and account for review time, I think that’s the better approach. We also have AWS SaaS founder credits, so we’re not under pressure to rush the product out just to start covering infrastructure costs. That gives us the ability to build and release things the right way.
It also helps that I’m a DevOps engineer and handle the development and infrastructure myself. I’m not paying an outside team every time I need to make a change for a reviewer, so I can iterate, resubmit, and learn from each review without those cycles becoming expensive.
That makes a lot of sense, especially the point about review cycles becoming cheaper when you control the infrastructure yourself. I’d be interested in continuing the conversation — what’s the best email to reach you at?
Happy to continue the conversation. You can sign up at VidSyndicate.com and reach me directly through support there. That’s probably the easiest way to connect.
Thanks! I’ve just sent it over.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts whenever you have a chance.