Social Submitter
In our number 3 slot, we have Social Submitter by the SEO DevGroup.
With the interface spread out over four tabs, Social Submitter is capable of posting to well over two hundred social sites after installation. These sites are contained in a database accessible on the “Users” tab. The site database is updated weekly and there is also a blank database for storing and managing sites that you discover on your own.
However, there is no built in account creation function. Instead, you must either create the accounts in your browser manually and then import them, or buy pre-created accounts from the company website. This is a little disappointing compared to BMD, where the account creation is built into the application and the process is streamlined.
Manual account creation is a real pain. Since one of the main reasons for using auto-bookmarking apps is to save time, this problem should be addressed. Perhaps in a future update? The same could be said for the project and user management sections themselves because, whilst they are clean and uncluttered, the interface is very utilitarian and doesn’t really lend itself to good organisation. Social Submitter feels like you are operating a database instead of a productive tool.
Once you have your accounts loaded into the program, you can progress onto the “Submit” tab.
This is where the over-engineered interface works really well, allowing you plenty of space to set your target URL, bookmark title, description and tags. On the right of the window is a formatted preview of bookmarked information and towards the bottom of the window, a list of links are displayed from the target URL page. Double clicking any of these links will cause it to become the target URL instead. Also, the whole “Submit” tab uses a spinnable text engine, which Social Submitter calls the “Synonimizer”. On the whole, this section is very well thought out.
There is also a “Crawl and Submit” tab. This is basically the same as the submit tab, except that it has a web site crawler attached to it. It will trawl through a website, picking out all the pages it discovers, ready for bookmarking. However, as anyone with any bookmarking experience will tell you, doing this will probably get your account deleted. Definitely one to use with caution!
When you are ready to submit, you are taken to the last tab, the “Stats” section. This will show you what is being bookmarked and what the success rate is, all in real time.
In all, Social Submitter is a great piece of software. But it was given 3rd place for a reason…
First, there is the little issue of updates. The software is updated frequently, which is great. However, you have to pay to receive the updates after three months, so it is actually subscription software. I can appreciate the reason for doing this from a business standpoint, but for the customer it is rubbish. You have to buy the software and then buy the updates. SEnuke works on a subscription basis, but you don’t have to buy the software first. It seems SEO DevGroup want the best of both, which is bad news for the user.
The problem I have with this is as follows. If I buy Bookmarking Demon, I have it for life with all the updates, which is great. If I buy SEnuke, I have to subscribe to access the software, which is fine. And if there are months I don’t want to subscribe, I can stop and not get access to updates, which is also fine.
But if I do the same thing with Social Submitter, I have bought and paid for an expensive piece of software that doesn’t work. If I buy a cable TV package, I am not made to buy the set-top box; it is free. So imagine that you did have to buy the set-top box and then you cancelled your subscription. That’s a whole lot of money you don’t get back and there is a very tangible loss of value.
Secondly, there is a lot missing from Social Submitter. Where is the Decaptcher support? Where is the auto-account creator? What about project management? SEO DevGroup need to catch up in these areas, especially if they want to continue their slightly unfair business model.
Lastly there is the user interface. When it works, it works brilliantly. But when it doesn’t, it feels like the clunkiest over-engineered piece of software on the planet. This is a powerful bookmarking application and it should be a joy to use…. But, unfortunately, it isn’t.
A good social bookmarking tool with a lot of potential, but not quite good enough.
Click here now to visit the main Social Submitter site…
