I wrote about “social backup” provider Zoogmo back in 2007. At that time, they summed up their service as follows: “With Zoogmo you get FREE unlimited backup that automatically runs in the background and lets you protect your data at multiple remote locations that YOU choose.”

I wondered then about their business model. It now seems possible they didn’t have one, because I just received the following e-mail:

Valued Zoogmo Customer,

We would like to thank you for your loyal support.

Since we launched our backup service in August 2006 we have enjoyed serving you but the time has come for us to close our doors.

We plan to shut down our servers on 31st December 2009 at which point your backed-up data will no longer be available. We suggest that you check out www.mozy.com for unlimited online backup for just US$5/month. If you have any queries about our shutdown, please email us at info@zoogmo.com.

Thank you once again for using Zoogmo,

The Zoogmo Management

The online backup industry has become overpopulated and highly competitive. Some of the players are bound to have to drop out. Re-reading my posts about Zoogmo, I wonder whether Online Backup Vault, whose representatives posted comments to both of my Zoogmo entries, will fare better. One can’t tell from their blandly glossy stock-photo website. On the other hand, their comment-spam-marketing processes certainly wouldn’t encourage me to entrust my data to them.

Does the failure of Zoogmo suggest a problem for social backup in general? Will we see similar notices from companies like Cucku and CrashPlan soon? Or will we see more social backup because we’re having more social everything?

These days, people don’t share photos or other files by sending them directly to their friends. Instead, “sharing” means uploading the file to a server somewhere “in the cloud” and then letting everyone know where they can see/hear/download it. This is a generation accustomed to entrusting everything to someone else’s servers. Only the geeks, the old-fashioned, and the slightly paranoid are likely to prefer a system where they know exactly where their files are and who has access. And only the geeks are likely to have friends with computers that are secure enough to compete with the data centers where online backup providers rent server space.

And the geeks already have the means to send the files to each other. I didn’t use Zoogmo myself, beyond the initial trial so I could write the review. And I’m a slightly paranoid, old-fashioned geek. My own experience suggests that a social backup system has to offer significant benefits over and above what the technically savvy can do for themselves.

Or else it has to re-frame itself altogether, and become something like Dropbox. Backup is a valuable part of what Dropbox provides, yet it’s almost incidental to the real function of the service, which is to make it easier to share and synchronize files. That’s a much easier sell, with a much bigger market.

Zoogmo had an interesting concept, but despite a 2008 mention in Lifehacker, it never caught fire. It just may be that most people feel safer entrusting their data to strangers than to friends.

Cucku didn’t invent “social backup,” but they are, to the best of my knowledge, the only backup provider that uses Skype’s peer-to-peer network to transfer your files to your chosen partner’s computer.  This is both original and clever. Partnering with Skype not only saves them building their own network, it brings them to the attention of Skype’s millions of users (more than 10 million of them online as I type this.) If you open Skype and click Tools | Extras, you’ll see Cucku Backup in the drop-down menu. That Skype certification definitely gives Cucku an edge that neither Zoogmo nor CrashPlan has. (I covered CrashPlan in February 2007 and Zoogmo in August 2007.)

I first heard about Cucku, a relative latecomer to this space, in November 2008. Though the Skype angle intrigued me, I was too distracted by the appalling choice of name to explore the product any further at the time. When offered a chance to interview Cucku CEO Rob Ellison about the impending launch of Cucku 2.0 and Cucku Pro, however, I not only downloaded and installed Cucku, but enlisted the Ur-Guru as a backup partner.

I still couldn’t resist asking Ellison what on earth had possessed him to give his product such an ill-omened name. He explained that it was because cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, and Cucku’s users store their data in “nests” on the computers of their friends. Which would all be very fine and cute, like the logo, except for one little problem.

The cuckoo never asks permission before laying its egg in the nest of some other unsuspecting, hardworking avian couple. Worse, the pair’s natural children don’t fare at all well: “The cuckoo egg hatches earlier than the host’s, and the cuckoo chick grows faster; in most cases the chick evicts the eggs or young of the host species.” (Wikipedia) By analogy, that would suggest that if you use this project, you can invade an unsuspecting computer and take over the hard drive, evicting all the user’s own data. Now there’s a winning idea.

Naturally the Cucku software doesn’t let you do any such antisocial thing. (If it did, no doubt Ellison could charge a good deal more for it, but he’d have to sell it on the black market.) You can’t back up files to anyone else’s computer until you get permission, and you can only use as much disk space as the person allots you. Furthermore, the arrangement is assumed to be reciprocal: when you set up the software for the first time, Cucku asks you how much space you want to make available to your backup partners.

Before sending your files to your backup partner, Cucku backs them up locally. In fact, Cucku is designed to be fully-functional offline backup software; you’re not required to engage in peer-to-peer backup if you don’t want to. (Nevertheless, getting your files offsite is a very good idea.) It’s dead easy to use, using the kind of “smart backup” technology many programs now apply, and automatically backing up common types of files as well as commonly-used folders. The common types of files it offers to back up will depend on what you have installed on your machine. I tested Cucku on my netbook (not wanting to risk any arguments with Mozy), which only has a basic Office install and a few other programs on it, so I got a fairly short list of backup options. If by any chance they miss something, you can add it manually.

The backup is encrypted, in a baffling proprietary format involving many folders. Your backup partners will never know what’s in the backup you store on their computers, and vice versa. Of course, this means that you can’t restore the data without Cucku, but that’s true with many backup programs.

If you decide later that you want to remove a file from your backup (because you deleted it from your drive on purpose rather than accidentally, for instance), you can use the Remove Files Wizard to do so. I find adding this extra step on top of editing the backup definition a trifle annoying, but at least it beats deleting the entire backup and starting at the beginning.

Backup by Sneakernet

The PowerPoint that Cucku’s PR agent sent me before the interview alluded to getting around the speed problem (always an issue with online backups) via “sneakernet.” I had to ask what that meant. It’s the geek version of “shanks’ mare.” Ellison himself had been no more clueful about the term than I; as a Brit, he’d’ve said “trainers” rather than “sneakers.” Either way, the point is that you can now (as of version 2.0) export your backup onto the media of your choosing and either physically carry it or mail it to your backup partner. If your backup is very large, even the good old US Postal Service is going to be faster than trying to upload it, particularly given broadband speeds in America. And even then, Cucku’s (or Skype’s) transfer speeds aren’t that impressive: my statistics tell me that my average transfer speeds have been 132 kbps upstream and 291 kbps downstream. Given that I can get 400 kbps upstream with my FTP client, not what you’d call breathtaking.

You can also export your partner’s backup, in case something happens to his local backup and he needs to restore his files in a hurry. (Well, given that Stefan is in Holland, it would not be that easy for me to get him his files in a hurry. He would be better advised to choose a backup partner closer to home.) Due to the geographical distance, and the fact that we only had a week before I was going to post the review, I opted not to try importing a backup to restore.

Backup and Restore Basics

Cucku’s main window offers you four options and three status windows. Down the left, under the cheerful logo, you’ll see “Backup Now,” “Restore Files,” “settings,” and “Online Help.” The status windows tell you about your local backup, your partner status (that is, whether you are backing up to your partner’s computer, or your partner is backing up to your computer), and whether you have messages. Messages generally say things like “Remote Backup Completed” and “Restore Completed,” but if something goes wrong, they’ll tell you that, too.” At the bottom you have “Pause,” “Cancel,” and “Close” buttons.

Cucku is designed to run in the background, all the time, as long as your computer is operating. You can set it so that it won’t make backups while you’re using your computer, but that might mean backups never get made, unless you leave your machine on all night. The Ur-Guru noticed that the program uses a comparatively large amount of RAM: 62-73 MB for the .exe file and 15 MB for the service. (I’m seeing 79 MB for Cucku.exe and 18 MB for CuckuSrv.exe on Mena right now.) Not knowing whether that was high or not, I took a look at the assorted backup services running on Enna, for comparison. Titan Backup: 37 MB. Memeo: 13 MB, with another 11 MB for its background service. Mozy: 10 MB for the backup, 11 MB for the status icon. (Huh?) Rebit: 9 MB each for the tray service and the autoplay. SyncBack SE: 8 MB. So, yes, I have to agree that Cucku is a bit of a memory hog. Still, we’re not talking very big numbers, given the average RAM of new computers today. (Even my netbook has 1 GB RAM.)

I’d advise turning it off (you do this by right-clicking the icon in the notification tray and selecting “Exit”) if you’re planning to make any Skype calls, though, just as I’d advise closing down Outlook and shutting down any other file transfers.

But back to the backups. Once your backup partner has accepted you (you need to know the person’s Skype ID), your partner backup will start automatically as soon as your local backup has finished, as long as your partner is connected and signed in to Skype. (Skype status is irrelevant; it was possible for Stefan to make backups to my computer when I had Skype set to “Do Not Disturb.”)

Restoring data works essentially the same way for both local and remote files. Once you click the “Restore Files” icon, you’re presented with another wizard that leads you through the steps of choosing your backup source and the files you want to restore. Follow the easy guidelines and presto! your files are returned to you. (You get a choice of versions, too, if Cucku has backed up more than one.)

Social Backup vs. Online Backup

So why would you want to back up your data with a friend rather than one of the many online service providers out there? After all, even the Ur-Guru doesn’t keep his computers in a Tier 1 data center with security alarms, door guards, emergency generators, and computer-safe fire-prevention systems. If there’s a natural disaster, the friends and neighbors close enough to reach by “sneakernet” are likely to be affected, too. And certainly their hard drives are as vulnerable to crashes and their offices to break-ins as yours are.

But the actual track records of these supposedly secure institutions are not always so impressive. Even if we leave aside the number of backup tapes that have gone missing from financial institutions and/or Iron Mountain, there’s the recent Carbonite fiasco. Plus, with everyone and his brother trying to break into the online backup space, there are a lot of venture-funded startup companies that aren’t going to make it. (And not just the startups. How long did HP Upline last?)

Then there’s the pricing model of online backup services, which tend to charge per gigabyte per month. That can start to add up after a while (though my client Spare Backup argues that their service comes out to 11¢/day and costs less than maintaining your own hardware and IT staff).

Rob Ellison didn’t want to follow that pricing model when he created Cucku Pro. The software, which allows you to install the program on 3 computers and to have as many backup partners as you want (thus acting as your family’s backup hub), costs $49.95 on a one-time basis. You can go on using Cucku 2.0 forever, though presumably there will be enough improvements in some future version to entice you to upgrade. And speaking of upgrades, if you’re an existing customer and upgrade from Cucku 1.0 before June 12, you can get Cucku Pro for $29.95; sign in to your account for details.

One final advantage of social backup is its viral nature. Because you need a backup partner, you have to tell someone else about the product. In doing so, you not only gain a new customer (paid or otherwise) for Cucku: you help spread the word about the importance of backups. In order to help you back up your files, your backup partner needs to set up the software, and it’s then easier for him or her to back up than not to.

Cucku definitely gets points for both ingenuity and ease of use. As file backup software goes, it’s decent of its kind—not outstanding, but certainly perfectly serviceable. Piggybacking on Skype for peer-to-peer is pure genius when it comes to dealing with technophobes who don’t want to have to argue with their routers or firewalls. (Not to mention the marketing benefits for them.)

But oh, the name…

Dov Sugarman from Zoogmo answered some of the questions I posed in Friday’s writeup in his comment on the post, and also provided me some help with connecting to a backup partner and testing the backup and restore features.

For the beta period, at least, there’s a “dummy partner” set up to let people test the system. When I selected “MyZoogmo” as a backup partner, I got a dialog box asking me how much space I’d like to offer and telling me how much space was available for my files.

So I selected some files, and noticed that there isn’t a “next” button and that you have to go back to the “partners” window to back up or restore a file, but Dov assures me they’re going to fix that.

Anyway, it said the backup was running, but that no files were backed up. I’m not at all sure why. But Dov called this morning to walk me through backing up and restoring a single file (except that it became 4 files by the time it was backed up—don’t ask me how). And this time it worked.

Zoogmo compares the files in your backup location to the files on your hard drive and offers to restore the ones which are missing. Pretty clever, and also fairly simple.

Dov also assured me that you don’t have to set up port forwarding in order to host someone’s backup files, even if you have a router. That’s definitely a plus.

So we’ll see how it evolves.

Apologies for the late posting of this week’s reminder. I had to attend a 4-hour business meeting in the middle of writing it, and I had too many appointments this week to write it in advance. “Those pesky clients,” as I sometimes jokingly call them, remain my priority.

I’ve been popular this week: three different companies have asked me to write about their products and services. Rather than mash them all into one article, though, I’ll deal with them separately.

This week’s star is Zoogmo, “Your online backup community.” If you think that phrase sounds familiar, you’re right: I wrote about CrashPlan’s similar approach back in February. Whereas CrashPlan works for Mac, PC, and Linux, Zoogmo is Windows-only (XP and Vista).

I confess I rather like the name “Zoogmo,” which reminds me of Greek zeugma (“yoke”) and refers to a figure of speech most appealing when it connects two unrelated ideas, e.g. “She left in a huff and a carriage.”

They also get points for their series of videos about how to use the program. But I do have to add a few caveats to the claim on their home page, however well it ties in with the infinity symbol in their logo:

Free? Well, Zoogmo doesn’t charge you. (Their business model? Don’t ask me. It’s not included in the FAQ.) And presumably your friends and family members won’t charge you to use storage space on their computers. But if you use Zoogmo to back up to an external drive, naturally you have to pay for the drive. And your friends paid for their computers, too.

Unlimited? Well, theoretically–if you have an unlimited number of friends with an unlimited number of space on their computers, and don’t mind your data scattered to an unlimited number of places. What “unlimited” really means in this context is that Zoogmo doesn’t put limits on how much data you can back up. (But maybe I should have the Ur-Guru test it to see how it handles multiple terabytes.)

On the other hand, being able to choose–and know–where your data goes is a good thing.

For some reason, the first time I tried to download the beta, I got the following error message: “Exception in AddUserToXmpp 50 – The operation has timed out.” The second time the download started (1.57 MB, which it doesn’t say on the download page), but my signup information was not replaced by a “Thanks for downloading, here’s what you do next” page.

I was a bit surprised that apparently you can ask any existing participant of Zoogmo whether s/he wants to be a backup partner. Though I’m not sure any of the people on the list right now are real people, or there for the sake of example. I’m not entirely sure I want to find out, either. Asking random people to be your “friend” is bad enough. Asking them to store your data strikes me as nothing short of insanity, even if Zoogmo’s claim that your backup partners “won’t even be able to tell what kind of files you are storing on your computer.” (Seems to me there could be some pretty serious liability issues between partners, even so.) But for the sake of example, since the program wants you to pick a partner, I selected the name of the Zoogmo team member who sent me the info about the product.

Once you have a partner–or several–you can move on to deciding what you want to back up. You can do this by category (My Documents, e-mail and contacts, Firefox bookmarks/IE favorites, etc) or by file. The default seems to be to check everything. For some reason, though, when I started unchecking items, I got a warning saying that I was attempting to back up more data than I had agreed with my partners.

Well, I hadn’t agreed anything with my so-called partners, because I was never prompted to enter into an agreement with them. Apparently Zoogmo makes that request to the partner for you, as a closer look at the “partners” window shows a “waiting for approval” note next to the name of the chosen partner. (Guess I should have watched the rest of those videos.)

The interface is straightforward, as the only possible activities beyond choosing partners and files/categories are “backup” and “restore.” But as with ION’s file transfer function, you have to set up port forwarding on your router in order to offer storage space to your partners. There’s a link to information about how to do this under the “advanced” tab. (And for anyone who’s curious, their proposed port for access is not the same as ION’s, so you could use the two together.)

A word on the subject of port forwarding and routers. If you have broadband Internet access (cable or DSL) and don’t have a router, get one. It will save you from thousands of automated attacks against your system, because every router builds in firewall protection. Most SOHO users don’t need separate (expensive) hardware firewalls, but there’s no point volunteering to join a botnet. And having a router is way less intrusive than using one of those irritating so-called Internet security packages. But I digress.

It’s not clear what happens if you have several backup partners. Does all your data get copied to each of them, or does Zoogmo just move on to the next after the first one is full?

So I can’t provide a live field test today, but Zoogmo certainly looks as though it would work for the right people under the right circumstances. The right people being folks who trust each other and all have high-speed connections and plenty of hard drive space. Oh, and whose computers are running most of the time, or at least likely to be running at the time any given partner needs to restore something from a backup. It might be especially worthwhile for those who don’t trust online backup services (or don’t trust the governments who can demand access to their data) but who still want some offsite backup.

If anyone starts using Zoogmo, let me know how it works for you–or doesn’t. You can comment here in the blog, or e-mail me: sallie [at] fileslinger [dot] com.

And as a bonus for waiting so long to get this, you get an extra link, this time to the CNET community newsletter, for members’ suggestions about the best way to back up and restore your computer to the same condition it was in before the crash.