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In regards to 'remoted' browser versus winSock......
While remoted browser is much slower, it is less likely to be affected by small code changes by myspace. There have been multiple small changes to the myspace login process, yet the browser based tools flow right thru them because they're filling in the same form fields and clicking the same button. They don't care about the workings behind the scenes. It is also much easier to implement and debug, since you can literally watch what is happening. If you're looking to manage a few accounts with a tool, than this is fine.
With a socket based solution (I actually use .net framework's HttpWebRequest, which is a layer higher than socket based), it is blazingly fast and has a small memory footprint. However, a small code change can break a regular expression, and a change in page flows/urls can be a ***** to fix. You literally have to break out a network traffic sniffer to figure out what is going on. But, you can easily multi-thread that puppy and have 30+ connections going on at once. This is the way to really make some progress. So, the development and maintenance costs are higher, but the end product performs better. Personally, i'd be nervous to release a socket-based approach commercially, since it would probably 'break' once a week. There would be a great deal of pressure involved in providing support for such a product.
Both ways have their pluses and minuses. It is up to the end-user to figure out which one best meets their needs.
Discussing this reminds me of a saying in regards to software development: "Your choices are Fast, Cheap, and Good. Pick any two."
BTW......HttpWebRequest manages cookie containers and allows setting of the USER_AGENT, etc. It offers all of the functionality that the PHP/CURL library does.
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