Category Archives: Using SocialSafe

Flickr Experiencing Downtime – Back Up Your Flickr Photos With SocialSafe

Discussion, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe, , , , ,

Photo sharing service Flickr is experiencing serious periods of downtime, just days after a releasing a major upgrade to the platform. At this point it’s not a total outage, with some users experiencing no difficulties, however other users have not been able to access the site for hours.

Flickr has acknowledged that there is indeed a problem, and tweeted to that effect:

The Flickr update on Monday overhauled the site’s interface by adding large, high-res photos, along with recently updating the iOS and Android apps. As a result of the iOS update, Flickr has seen a 25 percent increase in uploads from that platform.

It is thought at this point that the outage being experienced by some users is down to the additional load placed on the servers by the influx of high-res images being uploaded in the wake of the new update. Flickr’s 89 million users also had their upload allowance expanded to 1Tb, which may also have added to the problems.

If you are concerned about ever finding yourself unable to access your latest uploads, you can back up your Flickr account using SocialSafe. Simply download the free trial and add your Flickr account as an RSS feed to automatically download your most recent posts to your own machine.

At the moment SocialSafe can only back up your most recent photos via RSS, but we do have plans to add full support for Flickr in due course.

Ways To Back Up A Tumblr Account To Local And Cloud Storage

Discussion, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe, , , , , ,

There has been a lot of discussion this week about Tumblr, following Yahoo’s $1.1bn acquisition of the blogging site, with many users expressing fears that the internet giant would ‘ruin’ Tumblr. This tends to happen whenever a much-loved service gets bought out by a large company – eg Facebook buying Instagram last year.

However, if you’re a Tumblr user who is concerned that anything might happen to your posts and photos then you can keep all your future content secure by backing it up to your own with SocialSafe, using RSS.

If you’re already a SocialSafe user then just skip to the next paragraph to find out how to add your Tumblr account. If you haven’t heard of SocialSafe before, it is a desktop app that allows you to easily download, archive and export your content from a variety of social networks. All the content can be viewed, browsed and searched.  Visit our website to find out more and download the SocialSafe free trial.

To backup a Tumblr account within your SocialSafe journal simply go to the ‘Accounts’ view, click ‘Add Your Blog’ and then enter the URL for your Tumblr page. When you sync your account via RSS (this method) you will get your most recent 20 posts, along with any photos contained within those posts.

Obviously most Tumblr users will have more than 20 posts, which is why we have plans to add full support for Tumblr in the near future. However, we believe something is better than nothing, so we thought it best to point out this alternative method of backing up Tumblr by using RSS.

With SocialSafe you’re obviously backing up to your own machine, but if you’d prefer a cloud based solution, there are other options. One we’d recommend is using WordPress, so follow this link for simple instructions on how to import from Tumblr to WordPress.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via our Facebook page, on Twitter or through our Feedback Forum. You opinions and suggestions mean a lot to us, so please tell us what you think of our product!

TweetBackup Recommends SocialSafe as Alternative Backup Service – 6 Month Free Trial For Users

Announcements, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

Today it was announced that TweetBackup is discontinuing its Twitter backup service. Customers are being notified that the service will be winding down operations by the end of June. However, TweetBackup is recommending SocialSafe as an alternative way to back up tweets, mentions, followers and more.

An answer in the TweetBackup FAQ section explains why they’re closing down, and a statement on their main site outlined the time frame for the closure:

“It’s been a great 5 years, and we are proud to have served the needs of so many people needing to back up their Twitter accounts. Unfortunately, starting May 15, 2013 TweetBackup will no longer accept any new sign ups.

Existing TweetBackup users… will still be able to sign in to the system, and backups will still occur, for 30 more days – until June 28, 2013. If you would like to retrieve your data from TweetBackup, please remember to download it before June 28, 2013. You can read more about the TweetBackup shutdown here.”

We were approached by TweetBackup last week with the sole objective of making the transition as smooth as possible for their users, and we’re pleased to announce that we are offering a special 6 month extended free trial of SocialSafe for TweetBackup users.

For those of you who aren’t aware of what SocialSafe offers, here’s what to expect in terms of Twitter support:

  • Tweets
  • Mentions
  • DMs
  • Bio Information
  • Favourites
  • Followers/Following (automatic in-app filtering shows new/lost/mutual/one-way followers and following)

download tweets

Everything that you back up with SocialSafe is stored on your own PC/Mac, and presented to you in a journal where you can view, search and export your content. In terms of privacy, SocialSafe never sees nor stores any of the content you back up as it is all saved to your own machine. If you’re a fan of cloud storage then you can still export your data from SocialSafe and keep it wherever you want – we just thought it best to let individual users make that decision for themselves.

So to start using SocialSafe today, download the special 6 month free trial for TweetBackup users and take control of your Twitter content.

For more information about SocialSafe and the other networks it supports, please visit our main site, follow us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, and hang-out with us on Google+.

SocialSafe v6.5.1 released – Improved Help, First Usage & Sync Assistance, Language Support + more

Announcements, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

Yesterday we released SocialSafe v6.5.1 into the wild, so if you haven’t updated yet just open the app and you should be prompted to do so.

So what’s new in this version? Well our last release (SocialSafe v6.5) saw the inclusion of a major new feature – Insights – so this time we’re just taking care of a few bits and pieces that needed some attention, as well as laying the groundwork for more significant improvements later on down the line.

You won’t actually notice a lot of the work if you are already a SocialSafe user, as we’ve enhanced the first use network selection and automatic sync assistance that only occurs when you use the app for the first time.

SocialSafe v6.5.1

We’ve also completed the preparatory work for multi-lingual support, so you can expect French as an option within SocialSafe once we roll out the first Language Pack in the next few weeks. As always, we try to be as user-lead as is feasible in terms of the direction we take with our development, so if there is a language you’d like to see in SocialSafe then please let us know. Likewise, if you are multi-lingual and would like to help us with the translations then please do get in touch.

As is the norm with our releases, we’ve also managed to fix a number bugs and make some subtle UI improvements. In addition to this we’ve improved the Help file with a contextual menu to help uses get the most out of SocialSafe.

We hope you enjoy this latest release and as always, if you have any questions or suggestions then please get in touch on Facebook, find us on Twitter or on our Feedback forum.

Use Facebook Messenger More Than Texting? Here’s How To Back Up All Your Facebook Messages

Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

[tl:dr - To download your Facebook Messages right now then start using SocialSafe for free]

Today I came across a couple of articles that reinforced a point that has been becoming increasingly apparent lately – people are sending text messages less and less frequently, instead opting to use 3G or WiFi based messages on services such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

There are several reasons why someone may do it, each as valid as the other. For me, I have a brother who lives in Singapore and we use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger to send messages and chat in real-time for free. Some people live in areas of intermittent phone signal, but if they are connected to a WiFi network they can carry on sending messages to individuals and groups of friends, indiscriminate of the device owned by the other people (eg Apple users being able to use WiFi to send iMessages). And with Facebook sprucing up the chat interface and becoming more prominent on mobile phones – think Facebook Home and Chat Heads – it’s becoming more common to receive a Facebook message than a text for a lot of people.

This brings us to the main point. People were thrilled when Apple brought out the iCloud which allows users to automatically sync their contacts, text messages and other content to a separate backup drive just in case their iPhones were stolen, lost, or the data accidentally deleted. However, when you begin to drift away from using a communication medium that is being backed up automatically (text messages), how many of you think about keeping copies of the new messages you are sending and receiving?

If you communicate via Facebook a little or a lot, you might well be looking for a way to download all your Facebook messages. With SocialSafe, backing up your messages is quick and easy, and you’ll also be able to browse and search through your entire Facebook message history offline. Simply download the free trial and start backing up your online social life today.

After all, if your Facebook account were to bite the dust overnight (and believe us, it can happen), there isn’t anything the iCloud will be able to do to retrieve your chats with friends. Don’t take a chance with your online memories – back them up once, relive them forever.

What Happens To My SocialSafe Content If I Delete The Online Originals?

Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

We received a support query last night from one of our users and since their question has been asked quite frequently by other people, we thought it would be useful to post a short blog entry explaining this topic.

Here is an extract from their query:

“I see in the help section that if I delete data online, it is still stored in my hard drive.  Would it still be available after the next sync? or would my hard drive data also be deleted when syncing?”

In short – yes, absolutely, 100%.

This particular user was wanting to trim back their online presence while still keeping a copy of all their content. The good news for them – and many others who ask us the same question – is that yes, everything you back up with SocialSafe will still be stored on your own hard drive, even if the originals on the networks are deleted. If you then go to sync with your online accounts, SocialSafe won’t delete anything from your hard drive if the source data is no longer available online.

However, you will find that friends, contacts, followers etc will move to the another part of your SocialSafe journal if you disconnect with them. For example, anyone you decided to de-friend on Facebook or stop following on Twitter will subsequently appear in the ‘Lost Friends’ or ‘No Longer Following’ sections once SocialSafe syncs your account and realises that you are no longer connected.

So to come back to the original question, whenever back up your data, it is safely stored on your own PC or Mac forever. This is really the whole reason why we created SocialSafe in the first place – as a backup for your photos if anything happened to your Facebook account. Obviously we’ve come a very long way since then, as SocialSafe now boasts extensive support for a comprehensive range of content from a variety of networks including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.

To bring together all the various parts of your online story safely in one place, download SocialSafe now.

SocialSafe v6.5 Now Released – Insights, Updated Account View & More…

Announcements, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

We’ve finally done it! SocialSafe v6.5 was released yesterday and Insights is finally able to strut its stuff out in the wild! It’s been a very challenging week for our team of developers who have been putting in the hard hours to make sure SocialSafe was steered safely away from a Facebook API change shaped iceberg, as well as implementing all of the new and improved features. Let’s take a look at what’s in SocialSafe v6.5:

  • Insights – it’s still at beta, so please forgive us if you find the odd bug.  You can now easily see which is your most popular content or find out who you interact with most and you can even filter results by account or using different time periods.  You can also see on which days of the week you are most active.
  • Improvements to Search so that Search History is now displayed and Searches can now be saved
  • Updates to ‘Accounts’ view for easier navigation when adding a network & viewing your data
  • Backing up and display of Twitter Tweet/Mention/Favourite images
  • Improved Cancel Sync functionality so that syncs can now be cancelled safely and without any delay
  • Download improvements to reduce the Twitter enforced rate limit impact
  • Scheduled backup enhancement to help where a backup is missed

  • Fixes for a number of customer reported bugs & UI improvements

Here are a couple of screen shots showing you how the latest version looks:

SocialSafe v6.5 - new look 'Add Account' screen

As we’ve been saying for a while, this first round of Insights is just the start, and we’ve got plenty more planned for the future. While we’ve got our own ideas about what to include in subsequent releases, our development plan has always been user-driven to a certain extent, so if you have a light-bulb moment, then please by all means submit your suggestion to the team via the Feedback Forum.

On behalf of the other ‘non-techies’ here at SocialSafe, I think it’s appropriate to give a public pat on the back to our team of developers and testers, in particular Ben, Oli and George, who have all made this release possible in the face of some particularly challenging external factors - great work guys.

We’re already plotting for the next big thing, so stay tuned! If you have any questions or feed back from SocialSafe v6.5 then please get in touch via our Facebook page, on Twitter or send an email through the SocialSafe website.

From everyone here at SocialSafe, have great weekend!

How To Rank Your Twitter Followers

Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

We’ve just put together a very simple video that shows how you can use SocialSafe to create a full list of your Twitter followers, and rank them by how many followers they have.

As you can see, if you already use SocialSafe the whole thing can be done within a minute. If you’re not a user yet, then download the free trial of SocialSafe, and then all you need to do is back up your Twitter account and apply the basic filters as shown in the video.

You could also do this for the people who you follow, or you could change the query to search your followers‘ descriptions for a certain keyword or phrase. We’ll be producing more of these in due course, so if there is anything about SocialSafe you’d like to see demonstrated in a video then please let us know.

We hope you find this mini-tutorial useful, and if there is anyone who you think would benefit from hearing about this functionality, then please share this video with them!

SocialSafe Facebook & LinkedIn Login Issues Resolved – Update Required

Announcements, Tips & Tricks, Using SocialSafe

Dear SocialSafe users,

We’re aware that some of you have been experiencing issues when attempting to login to Facebook and LinkedIn through SocialSafe. As soon as we realised that this was causing difficulties for our users we looked into the problem to see how we could fix it.

The symptoms were such that when users attempted to add a Facebook account, the login screen was blank, meaning that they could not enter their login credentials to authorise SocialSafe to download their account content. The LinkedIn problem was slightly more complex, in that this login box was not appearing at all, meaning that users were not able to reauthorise their accounts when attempting to sync.

Our investigation revealed that the issues were caused by some subtle API changes made by the networks, and we are pleased to report that we have now updated SocialSafe to work correctly with these new API settings. All you need to do is open SocialSafe and install the update (v6.4.6) when prompted, and everything should be run smoothly once again.

We’d like to say a public ‘thank you’ to everyone who reported these problems – it certainly makes life easier for us when you tell us what works and what doesn’t!

For those of you reading this and wondering why you need to enter a password and what happens to it, allow us a brief moment to explain this privacy point:

When backing up any content from your social networks to your own PC/Mac, the respective network needs to know that you (the data owner) are the one requesting it, hence why password authorisation is required. SocialSafe as a company never actually sees nor stores your login details, and furthermore, any content that you back up using our app is only stored on your own machine – we never see nor store any of your data.

And finally we’re sure that there are many of you wondering what’s going on with SocialSafe v6.5 and the new Insights feature that we’ve been promising you. Well, we had originally planned to release v6.5 before Easter, but as we hope you’ll understand, addressing the Facebook and LinkedIn login issues had to take priority. However, we’re pleased to say that we will be issuing a full release next week, which will include Insights and more!

Thank you all for your patience up to this point – we hope today’s update fixes everything for you, and that you all enjoy the Easter break. Next stop – SocialSafe v6.5!!

Have a great weekend.

- the SocialSafe team