When Jennifer Davis from thebluedoor invited me to review SocialSafe on this blog, I was faced with a small problem. SocialSafe is a program designed to back up your Facebook data, and I don’t use Facebook. (I object to their terms of service.) But I have readers who do use the social network, and I wanted to cover this product precisely because getting anything out of a walled garden like Facebook can be so difficult.
So I went looking for a reviewer by posting a request in my LinkedIn status, and my fellow BACN board member Michael North volunteered. Michael uses Facebook for his business, making a product like this particularly valuable to him. I hooked him up with Jennifer and he dove right into test-driving SocialSafe.
Because Michael had trouble making screenshots, I’m including the video from the SocialSafe website for those who want to see the product in action. You’ll want to click the button with the arrows at the corners to view it in full-screen mode.
SocialSafe Intro Video from Pascal Wheeler on Vimeo.
This is a very easy-to-use basic backup system for social media. I used it for backing up my Facebook account. It has several nice features that are worthy of note.
First, the system itself was easy to download and use. It automatically connects to your Facebook account sign-in screen when backing up the first time. You just enter your password and it does the rest. On Facebook, it backed up my profile, pictures and friends information. I had about 100 pictures, 180 friends and a decent-sized profile on Facebook and it backed up everything in less than one minute. It put an icon on my desktop as well.
There are some additions I would love to see. One is backing up my wall information. The developers have that listed as a future addition and seem very intent on providing it. Second is that I run a group on Facebook for about 200 people. I would love to have that backed up as well. That is going to take SocialSafe longer but they state it is in their development funnel down the road. Since, in my opinion, groups will be the key function of Facebook in the near term, I do wish they would address that.
There is no limit on how many times you can back up your Facebook account; just click on the icon and type in your Facebook password and away you go. The software can put in a notification on Facebook when it does a backup. Some may find that annoying, but Facebook has become consumed with notifications. Putting up with a small plug for their product is a very small price to pay. It can be turned off by accessing the settings portion of the software.
You also can open the desktop icon at any time and look at what has been saved. That is very nice and again, quite easy to open and use.
The price is under $3 US and is a one-time charge. That is very cheap and well worth the money. While Facebook probably has tons and tons of backups, no computer network is completely safe or secure. For the price, this is a very worthwhile investment and likely will gain rapid acceptance given its ease of use, simple interface and rapid utility.
As people spend more and more time on social networks, backing up the data—and metadata—they keep there becomes increasingly important. (In this case, by “metadata” I mean things like the relationships between the contacts.) If you’re a heavy Facebook user, SocialSafe seems like a very good idea. It’s the first tool of its kind that I’ve heard of, but now that there’s one, competitors are sure to appear. Congratulations to iBundle and 1minus1 for getting in on the ground floor.
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OK two things. Yesterday the makers of Social safe announced that they have a “Time capsule” feature out this week that will allow you to compare different archieved backups. That way you can see what you had on Facebook at points in time. That could be quite powerful and I applaud them for that
Second is that there is a low level little virus wandering around facebook right now. It hacks your Facebook page, steals your contacts, wipes out your profile, pictures and so on, changes your logon ID and ythen uses contact information to go after your entire PC. I know of 2 people on my contact list that have been hit by it.
Well, it attacked me yesterday. I saw what it was doing and did a complete shutdown, stopping the attack. It was obvious for me what it was and it takes several minutes to “do it’s thing”
But if I had been away from my PC, there would have been heck to pay.
Had i been hacked, Social Safe would have been a godsend