Social Bookmarking Tools

I have been looking around for tools to help me with social bookmarking. You know the kind of thing, instead of manually adding my link to Delicious, etc one service at a time, these tools will add your link to them all, at once, no muss no fuss.

That’s the idea.

It doesn’t take mad Google skills before you find OnlyWire. Looks like just the ticket.

OnlyWire: The Only BookMarklet You'll Ever Need!

The only bookmarklet you’ll ever need, it says. Sure looks comprehensive too. Doesn’t quite do them all, but it’s a start.

But, and isn’t there always a but? But, those mad Google skills come in handy a bit more.

It seems there is a sneaky little clause in the small print that everyone agrees to when you blithely sign up. Yup, you guessed it, accusations of spam, no less.

Could be people are leaning toward tin-foil-hat brigade, or maybe they have a point. It seems when you add your registration you give the company carte blanche to link up, using your account, anyone they choose to. Without your confirmation or even being aware. Hmmm … is that right? Could that be true?

Enough people are accusing them of it that I am worried, but so far nothing has appeared in my lists that I didn’t put there.

Anyone have any experience of this service, or can recommend a better one?

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Software Tools

Comments

6 Responses to “Social Bookmarking Tools”

  1. Andrew Mason on August 28th, 2008 10:08 pm

    I have been using OnlyWire for around a year and have found it to be great. I must admit that I did not know about the small print item you mention, guess I skimmed over the small print in the AUP just like 99% of the population.

    I created specific OnlyWire accounts and use the bookmark from Safari and FireFox. I was hoping that Ping.fm would do something similar but afraid it does not.

    I would also love to hear of any other products that do a similar job.

    Thanks,

  2. John Carcutt on August 28th, 2008 10:17 pm

    Hey Chris, I have direct experience with this happening to one of my clients accounts. They actually accused me of adding the “bogus” link and then ended up being convinced that someone hacked their account.

    Once I showed them the “small print” over at OnlyWire we dropped the service and never had a “mysterious” listing show up again.

    We were not hacked, just spammed.

    I wrote a post (#2 for “onlywire spam” on Google)about this activity almost a year ago, so my experience is a bit old. I don’t know if they have cleaned up their act at all since then.

  3. Dana_Willhoit on August 28th, 2008 10:17 pm

    I found Onlywire to be fairly buggy and tedious to use and stopped using it months ago. If it did what it says it does, it would be a great tool.

  4. I Draw Pictures on August 28th, 2008 10:59 pm

    I was going to leave my comment here on my thoughts about OnlyWire but it got a bit long-winded so I posted it to my blog instead at the following link:

    http://idrawpictures.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/onlywire-bookmarking-tool-warning/

  5. Chris Garrett on September 2nd, 2008 11:55 am

    @Andrew – I am getting mixed reports about it. I guess I will see what happens

    @John – This is the problem, I don’t mind so much with my own account as I can keep an eye on it but I wouldn’t want to recommend something that might reflect poorly on me, wouldn’t want to be accused like your client did you

    @Dana – Bugs are not good either, hmm – thanks!

  6. I Draw Pictures on September 2nd, 2008 2:46 pm

    I left a comment but it seems to be hung up in moderation due to a reference link.

Leave a Reply