Spyder

After a year I'm still impressed with this software and even more impressed the developers have kept up with it considering MySpace virtually killed themselves with their website change awhile back. It's true a lot of people have abandoned MySpace for Facebook but as a music producer MySpace is still nice free repository to share my music and promote it. This app really does have the only working song play increaser that improves your chart ranking, I highly recommend it for any new bands.

This is by far the most complete MySpace marketing tool out there. I was using oCommunity a few years ago and it got several of my accounts deleted. I wish I had searched harder for Spyder because it's been nothing but pure satisfying success since I started using it to manage all my MySpace accounts. I can't even begin to image all the hard work that's gone into this application, I spent weeks writing my own scripts after I ditched oCommunity to do only a small fraction of what Spyder can do. If you need results from MySpace then I highly recommend Spyder, it's worth every time saving cent. I was stupid and paid $300 for the full version of oCommunity which is not even a Mac native application. Spyder which is a native Mac application only costs $79 for everything, and by everything I mean everything any other MySpace tool can do and then some, like the mp3 song plays increaser which actually works towards increasing your rankings in the charts, and I've tried them all. Sure every application could use more features or do something better but we'd be waiting forever and as it stands this application is the best in its class and a better price.

I don't think rearranging the UI for messages would be beneficial to most users. There's a good reason Apple Mail doesn't use the "wide" style. First it takes up a lot more space on the screen and if you're on a 12" macbook that's inconvenient . Second I think it looks ugly, and I don't think Apple got it wrong. Obviously if I'm off my rocker on this one and enough suggest it as a feature request I could make it an option. Until MySpace finalizes their new layout there will be some quirks to work out, such as with newlines in messages and bulletins format. Eventually the auto-update will work how it does in Flirt. There are some permissions issues that need to be ironed out. If nothing shows up in Spyder from a search, you'll get the same result on MySpace. If otherwise I'd like to see an email from you so I can fix it. Keep in mind that Spyder does require frequent updates to stay compatible with MySpace and a lot of the cost is associated with support. If MySpace never changed anything the support cost would be much less and the price would be much lower.

The App does what it claims, it still has some little drawbacks: The GUI is not really perfectly streamlined but it will work. On the mac we have seen better. Examples: - MySpace Mails: the user always has to pull up the message content window to be able to read message contents. Better would be to put them on the RIGHT of the screen vertically because that's how mails are read (and why people use WideMail to change OSX Mail's behaviour). - Message/Posting Previews are not accurate: in MySpace posted messages look totally different, you have to insert extra html like to make linebreaks work, no real preview is available. This takes the user a lot of time fixing messages and trying them out in MS via the browser until they look good. - Bulletins have also no real previews. In MySpace (at least in MS v2.0) the bulletins have a fixed width which Spyder does not reflect. - Autoupdate: there is an automativ update checker. It loads the new Spyder version to the standard Downloads-folder, unpacks it and leaves it there for you to move. There are better systems (like Sparkle). - The user really has to know a lot about MySpace etc. to make any use of this app at all. I am using it since several months and still have no idea why some search functions won't work (maybe MySpace restrictions?) or some tasks need many steps to achieve. There is room for usability improvements. - Wishful thinking: german translation (and others?) would be nice. - I find the app a little costy. There is just no alternative. There are more examples but I think you get the idea. I am sure much work went into this app and updates come regularly as promised and quickly. Whenever MySpace changes something you got your Spyder update only hours later, maybe a day!

Great program..! Am very much enjoying the ease of use & feel it is worth the $. Thanks, Couple of Q's: -How does the Proxy host feature work for the Increase Song Plays Function.. Not sure of the steps to take here. -There was mention of a Facebook / Youtube booster in the preview. Are there any functions here? Look forward to hearing from someone shortly. Thanks..! Ron

I've been using Spyder since the beginning of the year and it's come around quite a bit since then. Right after I started using it version 2.1 came out and it included all these useful features like searching people's comments for active users and support for groups. Now with the latest version I'm able to add real song plays and bump myself up in the charts, something the mp3plays program doesn't do! I'm truly amazed at how quickly the developers fix and improve this program. I'd recommend it for anyone trying to conquer myspace land.

Spyder is really helping me kick a** and save a huge amount of time in band promotion. I use Spyder everyday for multiple accounts and I can't even imagine going back to managing my MySpace accounts through a web browser again. I just upgraded to the elite license and am very happy with the new proxy support. I've found that setting the delay isn't much of any issue when you use the proxies because they are all typically very slow anyways. When ever I had any questions they were answered quite quickly and the few problems I had were fixed just as quickly as well. Each update gets better and new features seem to spring up frequently.

as a user of this program almost daily for well over 2 years, i can report that i've found the developer very responsive and willing to hear and help track down bugs and issue updates. this program is not for the causal myspace user. but for who it's meant, it's a great value and time saver. very well worth the money. if you don't understand why you'd want to spend money on it, then it's not intended for you and your uses. it CAN get a little crashy with databases containing hundreds of thousands of records. i've never lost any data or work.

I finally got a reply from the developer who sent me my unrecoverable code. Upon entering it, Spyder sent me to a webpage asking me to upgrade for a grand total of $130 to continue using the software. This is obviously a scam. My Investigative Team has submitted the developer's information to various groups we're associated with including the Better Business Bureau.

When I first purchased this software, I could not activate it. I had to contact the developer who emailed me a code that fixed the problem. Now I have a brand new computer that I just bought recently. Once again, the activation would not work. I contacted the developer. Instead of troubleshooting, he emailed me 2 links pertaining to pages on the support page. ...Pages I had already read through and failed to have success with. I forwarded the developer previous emails with him including my proof of purchase receipt from PayPal. Since that last email I have heard nothing back and my software is still paid for and not activated. I would hate to call this a scam... perhaps it's just really terrible tech support. Regardless, it doesn't work and the developer doesn't seem very interested in helping the paying customers. ...or at least not this one.

I am now getting an error when trying to log into the account I maintain with spyderx. The error says "Login failed. Either a server error occurred, the login or password is incorrect, or the account does not exist. Try again?" When I actually logged into the real myspace, I saw that my account had been blocked, likely due to the spydex activity, but I entered a captcha and unblocked it. This happened several times. Could this be the problem? Has MySpace somehow shut me down from using spyderx? I tried to log into my personal account and even a third account that I maintain and I got the same error, even though I did not maintain these particular accounts with spyderx. Have they just shut down this software completely? Any ideas?

So the consensus is that this App is horrible in its current incarnation. Soooo.. what alternatives do people recommend for MySpace Management Apps on the mac?

Looks like it's gone from $35 to $40. Good luck again! Even if you have huge numbers of friends, after trying this out, I've concluded that it isn't going to save you that much time compared to doing it on the site itself - for free.

For what this program is designed for... adding and managing large numbers of myspace users, it's really the only Mac native solution. I have a premium license with free lifetime upgrades. Version 2.0 is worth looking at if you have only used 1.4.x. There are a lot more features and the program is MUCH faster and efficient. The developer has been amazingly helpful and responsive whenever I've had problems, sometimes releasing an update addressing my issue mere hours after contacting him. The program has been and continues to be too crashy, but some of that, he tells me has to do with Apple's Core Data framework and how it scales when dealing with hundreds of thousands of records (Myspace users) 2.0.9 is vastly more stable and improved over the initial 2.0 release. So to sum up, the program can be frustratingly unstable, but it's improving, it's a Mac native solution, and the developer is super helpful and responsive.

Sadly, the app doesn't do what it's designed to do-- add friends. I had no problem with the older version and I thought this would be a worthy upgrade since it was so clunky before only to find out it doesn't work at all. bumma!

I'm a registered user of SpyderX 1.4. I have to say that initially, given all the MySpace spam it seemed like a good idea at the time. But over time I found that version 1 was very clunky: slow to fetch data even on a 6M/s DSL connection, and about as complex as using MySpace just from the web page. I basically gave up on SpyderX. For my needs I now run FLOCK, the web browser. The UI is a lot more simple [friends sidebar] and you can do everything necessary from a SIDEBAR. And not only with MySpace [read on]. So if you add Glimmerblocker [to filter ads] + AdBlock Plus [to get the insidious stuff] to Flock you pretty much have an effective social network wrangler that does not only MySpace, but Facebook, Flickr, and a bunch of other services. Maybe the author has done some improvements, maybe he's more accessable to his users [this time], maybe... well, for me, as far as version 2 goes, unless it's a free upgrade for me.. I think maybe [based on previous experience with the app, keychain bugs, etc] it's a pass this time.

35 bucks? Ha. Good luck.

For all the people who can't find and email. I managed to find one hidden in the website: help@spyderx.com.

I'm annoyed because my computer died and I had to reinstall everything from a backup, Spyder doesn't work with the registration number I bought, and there doesn't seem to be a contact email address where I can get in touch with them about this issue... which obviously is why I'm writing here. I'm with the others on this one, Please provide an email contact address. Thanks p.s. Please help me out by emailing me! Thanks Richie

It would be helpful if there was a contact email address on the website.