As automated blogs users know we use socialbookmarking on all the sites we build. The purpose is to get the newsites and as many pages as possible spidered and indexed by the search engines. We use just one tool for this job: RssBookmarker although quite a few users also have AutoSocialPoster running on their WordPress blogs.

One issue that I have seen cropping up a few times is this:
What is the difference between RssBookmarker and AutoSocialPoster and the free services such as OnlyWire? This article attempts to cover the important differences and explain why I use bookmarking and in particular RssBookmarker so much.

I must give full credit to Anthony Ellis of Mass-Automation the source of ASP and RssBookmarker for much of the following as I freely adapted his comparisons between OnlyWire and ASP from a forum post he wrote. Thanks Anthony.

Differences between OnlyWire and ASP/RssBookmarker

Difference 1: The most obvious difference is that these free services are not fully automated. They require some manual interaction.

Here's the process to bookmark accounts using Onlywire:
1. Create your blog post
2. Go to your blog post permalink
3. Click the onlywire submit button on your toolbar
4. Enter/confirm your blog post data including tags and URL
5. Select the sites you want to submit the bookmark to
6. Submit them
7. No confirmation is sent so you don't know if the submission was successful or not.

If you have more than one blog (which most of us do), then you must repeat this process for each blog and post!

Here's the process using ASP:
1. Create your blog post
2. Post is bookmarked, and email report is sent.

If you have more than one blog, just repeat step 1. If your blog is posted to automatically, as with all automated blogs or with an auto blogging tool like RSS to BLOG then using ASP you don't have to do anything. The blog will be posted to and the post will be bookmarked automatically.

In fairness, Onlywire does have an API that allows you to add posts remotely, BUT they limit how many posts you can submit and they scrutinize the content of the posts. They can disable your ability to bookmark your posts at any time. It is a free service after all. Possibly most importantly you need to be able to program your application – not viable for most of us.

Difference 2: The next big difference is that ASP bookmarks to more bookmarking accounts and allows you to submit to random number of bookmarking accounts and multiple instances of the same type of bookmarking account automatically.

* OnlyWire: 22 Accounts. Several are actually no longer working (eg. Shadows and Spurl)
* OnlyWire: Only allows one account per bookmarking service per user.
* OnlyWire: You can either submit to all accounts you have or select specific accounts manually.

* ASP: 34 sites supported
* ASP: Supports an unlimited number of Scuttle and Scuttleplus accounts.
* ASP: Supports Multiple accounts from same bookmarking site (So you can have 10 Magnolia accounts, 12 Simpy accounts, etc.)
* ASP: Can automatically choose from X number of random accounts or any number of selected accounts.

This in effect means you can have hundreds and hundreds of social bookmarking accounts from a single install of AutoSocialPoster.

Sure you can create multiple OnlyWire accounts to try and match the ASP features, but the point here is time-saving automation. If you have all the time in the world, then you don't need any of this. Just bookmark your posts by hand.

Difference 3: OnlyWire is a middleman. You add your blog post to your blog, then you need their server to add your post to the bookmarking sites. If their site goes down (and it does) what happens? If their service stops, what happens?

There is no middleman with ASP. Your blog bookmarks its own posts. Fewer points of failure and allows you total control over what is happening with your business.

Pretty much all the benefits of AutoSocialPoster also apply to RssBookmarker but there are some important differences between the two and so one would probably chose one over the other according to one's own circumstances.

RssBookmarker, unlike ASP works with any site that has an Rss feed and even comes with an application to make an Rss feed for sites that do not already have one. So, if you have a mixture of types of site then RssBookmarker might be a better choice.

RssBookmarker is a server based script. It lives on your webhost and must be installed, not a difficult task but a little more involved than ASP. (However, anybody buying RssBookmarker through me will be entitled to a free install on their hosting, just contact me and we can sort it out!)

RssBookmarker bookmarks everything in the Rss feed. ASP has a filter to avoid posting very short posts, this helps to reduce spam posting. This means that if your site is primarily composed of short posts then ASP is a good bet as only the longer, more valuable content will be bookmarked.

If you have loads of sites, many tens or even hundreds of WordPress blogs then ASP may become cumbersome to administer. There is a tool to help with managing bookmarking accounts but version upgrades to hundreds of sites… …eeek! RssBookmarker is a single install no matter how many sites you have. We have hundreds of sites running off a single shared server with many, many bookmarking accounts.

In my opinion, if one is running websites as a business then one can not afford to bookmark pages/posts by hand. Both ASP and RssBookmarker are very reliable, well supported and valuable tools and I would not want to lose either of them. The choice as to which to buy is, I hope, made a little easier by the foregoing!

Andrew Wilson