Web2Submitter, TrackBoost and UtilityPoster Reviewed. Verdict? Not Worth It.

Alright, I admit it.  Lately I’ve been playing around with some Web 2.0 tools and software designed to help me get “up to speed” on social networking.  I enjoy trying out new things and seeing if they work or not.  A recent suite of software programs I bought designed to help get the most out of blogging and bookmarking seemed to be just what I was looking for.

Let’s face it.  Who has time to create and manage profiles on all these social networking sites? I digg, I propel, I stumble…and it eats up a lot of time!

Still, I wanted to give the social side of things a fair shake.  So I bought three programs which seemed to be well-received by the marketing community at large:  Web2Submitter, TrackBoost and UtilityPoster.

Web2Submitter is designed to help you submit your blog stories to the social networking sites (I believe, around 14 of them).  The jury is still out on this one - namely because I can’t seem to get it to work.

Supposedly it automatically logs you in and pre-fills the forms you need to submit your story or article.  On mine, it just sits there and either fills out half of a form or doesn’t log you in at all.

A program that was supposed to save time ended up taking 2 hours to try and use.  I’m currently working with their helpdesk to try a workaround. I’ll post my results here if I ever get any.

TrackBoost is meant to help you generate more trackbacks from your blog to other blogs. Its whole purpose involves linking people to more information about a topic you’ve blogged about. The video for it also hints at getting you more traffic by way of trackbacks from high PageRank sites.

I played around with TrackBoost last night (adding related links to some of my more popular blog postings).  It seems to have one effect - taking people off of my blog and not letting them come back!  Not exactly the boost in traffic it claims to be…   I can see where this might have been a valuable tool…in 2005.  A lot of the results it returns are worthless, so you spend an inordinate amount of time picking through posts to find the good ones.

This is mentioned in the video, so be prepared to sift through a lot of spam-ridden blogs to find a few gems.  The fact that it prepares the trackback code for you is a definite bonus, still this is something you can do yourself with a little practice.  The time-saving code it does give you is offset by the slim pickings in decent blog posts you get in the results it returns.

UtilityPoster is a helpful little tool that gathers some of the latest posts on blogs around the web, based on a keyword or phrase you search for. It’s how I created Friday’s post on social bookmarking.   It docks itself to the right corner of your screen and makes it easy for you to just click and drag relevant posts over into your blog itself.  If you’re ever suffering from writer–err blogger’s block, having this little piece of software handy can help spark some ideas for you to write about.

The verdict?  Not all of the software is worth it.  If you really want fresh blog news on your subject, definitely give UtilityPoster a try.  As for Web2Submitter and Trackboost - I was not impressed.

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