SocialSafe – Facebook Backup Tool

SocialSafe - Facebook Backup Tool

For most of us, Facebook has evolved from an ordinary social networking site into something that’s meshed into our lifestyle, a part of our daily routine. We use it to connect with family and friends, send each other messages, share photos and videos and tons of other stuff. What if Facebook suddenly shutdown or its servers crashed or got hacked and all of those data – photos, videos, messages, friends list, etc were lost or destroyed? I’m sure Facebook isn’t shutting down anytime soon, but the threats of its servers crashing or being hacked are imminent.

Anyways, if you’re worried about all your Facebook photos, videos, messages and other stuff, don’t worry because the folks from SocialSafe has you covered. SocialSafe is an Adobe AIR-powered desktop client that lets you download and backup all your Facebook content (photos, videos, wall posts, profile information, etc.) straight into your computer, which you can later on view offline from your computer.

SocialSafe also backups up photos uploaded by your friends or other people that have you tagged on it.

Here’s a short video explaining how SocialSafe works.

SocialSafe Explanation .. Introducing Wall Backups from Pascal Wheeler on Vimeo.

One thing though, SocialSafe is NOT free. However, for the meantime it’s on a special introductory price of $2.99 so if you think that this might come in handy, I suggest that you grab it now while you can. Since it runs on Adobe AIR, it means that it is cross platform, you can install it on any operating system (Windows, Mac or Linux). You also don’t have to worry about privacy because the backup are all stored on your computer and not on any external web server.

When you’ve purchased a license key, all you need to do is download the desktop client and install on your computer. Once setup is done, just provide the license key and connect to Facebook. In order to backup your wall posts, you’ll have to grant access to SocialSafe to access your Facebook profile. Btw, if you don’t want to backup everything you can select what stuff you want to download.

If you want to know more about SocialSafe, you can view their FAQ page or visit their website.

So what do you guys think of SocialSafe? For $2.99, would you consider purchasing a license so you can download and backup all of your content on Facebook? Please share your thoughts.

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17 Comments

  1. My use of Facebook has increased since my posting in October, 2009, so my interest in this product has too. I may eventually download and purchase it. However, I doubt that I would be able to use or access the backups in any format other than the Adobe Air client. Useful as that might be, if I want HTML copies of my wall postings I will apparently have to do the backup manually.

    But a more immediate concern is that my definitely non spam comment was identified by CFC as spam. I’ve asked for an explanation from WordPress, just now, and will see what they have to say. Do you have any suggestions as to why this would occur, and how I might avoid it in the future?

  2. What I want to know is after installing it, I still do not know where the files are saved to. Has anyone figured it out yet? Please post the location on the pc if you do. Thank you

  3. @Michael – Yeah, but not all Facebook addicts. Only those who’ve upload lots of media and don’t have any local backups or those who’ve posted important stuff on their walls and would like to save their friend connections. :)

  4. @Jim – I’m not sure on how the backed up files are saved or formatted but I think it would all be saved as is so if you have them as HTML files, then the backups would also be in HTML format. Just to be sure, you can contact them about it and ask.

    Btw, I recovered your comment from the spam folder as it was considered spam by CFC, a plugin that I use here on my blog to fight spam.

  5. I don’t upload media, have no interest in doing so. I do write posts, and post related links to my Wall. These would ordinarily be HTML files. There is no local copy.

    How can I get copies of these onto my computer in a format that lets mey make them into HTML files?

  6. @Industry News – Thanks! Yeah, its good to have my blog back up. Anyways, SocialSafe is not for everyone but for a certain group of people who has invested a lot of time and effort on Facebook and would like to make sure they don’t lose any of those data.

    I’m sure a lot of hackers and crackers are trying their best to bomb Facebook and Twitter these days. :D

  7. It is good to see your blog is up and running again, jaypee! As far as this facebook backup tool named SocialSafe is concerned, I am unsure whether people will actually rush to buy into this kind of service, whether it is free or not, until such time as they actually experience a loss of data. It must be the ultimate hackers dream to bomb facebook! I’ve never really thought about it in this manner!

  8. @Pascal – Thanks for taking the time to drop by and explain more about SocialSafe. I’m still thinking on whether I should purchase a license but when I do, expect a more detailed review of the service and desktop client. Again, thanks for stopping by and more power to you guys! :)

  9. Hi Jaypee, firstly many thanks for taking the time to review SocialSafe, much appreciated. Always great to get feedback on the price too so thanks guys for the comments. I just wanted to chip in to explain why we charge and why people are using SocialSafe.

    We have a firm belief here at SocialSafe that if you make something useful you shouldn’t be afraid to charge for it. We seem to be stuck in the age of free first then try to monetise later. Now this does work in certain circumstances but it’s still a high risk strategy and more often requires much greater investment for support, additional development etc. Also free creates less of a connection with users .. easy come, easy go.

    Much better to do the reverse, charge first so that every user that believes in your product contributes to it’s ongoing development. And let’s be honest here $3 to save your friend connections, all the photos you’ve uploaded from a mobile and your wall posts is not a lot to ask. Even at $10 the price we’ll eventually be charging, it’s a pretty good deal. Many of our users would have paid more.

    So I touched briefly there on why people are buying and using SocialSafe. According to anonymous stats (provided by users that have opted in to do so) since June we’ve helped them back up almost 2.5 million friend connections and almost 500,000 photos. The reasons for using SocialSafe are one click peace of mind, easy download of all photos and being able to scroll back in time through backups to see what’s changed. One side affect of this last feature is seeing which friend connections you’ve made and lost.

    Thanks again for the article and keep up the good work.

    Pascal

  10. @Chris – I understand what you’re saying and I can say that’s true for most users but there are some who don’t have backups or don’t keep backups on their computers.

    If you do have backups of your media files, this tool can be useful if you want to backup your wall posts which doesn’t have any source files or backups like those media files.

  11. If I will rate this from 1 to ten, my score would be “1” :-)

    First if you have uploaded a file to facebook there will always be a ‘source’ that would be your first backup like Jhay said through comp (hard disk).

    If I have important file, 1 backup file would not be enough. Like photo’s I usually put it on my hardrive, external and flash drive.

    Third, you can now restore files even if your hard drive already formatted.Just ask your computer technician to save your folder/file.

  12. @Jhay – That’s a good question. I guess they need to get back some of the money they spent on developing the program and client.

    I know what you mean but I know some people who don’t keep backups of their files on their PC or maybe they lost the files because their PC crashed so this tool can be useful to get back those files that were uploaded on Facebook. :)

  13. I don’t upload that much media on my Facebook account so there’s a little need for me to have it on back up. I just use it to connect with my friends and schoolmates.

    What puzzles me is the price tag. It’s not really that expensive but why put a price on it to begin with?

    Besides, if most of your media was uploaded to your FB account via your PC, wouldn’t there be a copy of it in the hard drive to serve as a back up to begin with?

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