Policies & Practices no image

Published on July 13th, 2010 | by David Dombrosky

2

Want to Save Your Online Data? There’s an app for that…

In May, I participated in a webinar hosted by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies that focused on creative technology strategies for state arts agencies.  One of the issues that came up during the Q & A was backing up communications from social media platforms.  As entities within state government, many state arts agencies are required by law to retain copies of their communications.  But how do you archive communications that take place on social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook?

backupify-small-logoOver the past two months, I have been using a potential solution.  Backupify provides daily online backup for your social media and software-as-a-service data.  They are the only online backup and storage provider to seamlessly back user data to the Amazon S3 cloud with its strong security and data duplication policy.

So here are the pros and cons of my experience with Backupify…

PROS

  1. Backupify provides a centralized backup location for a number of online services, including:  Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, and many more.
  2. Businesses utilizing Google Apps can back up all of their data at relatively low cost.
  3. Quick and easy setup.
  4. With the free account, you are able to backup one account per online service.  The premium account level backs up an unlimited number of accounts per service for just under $60/year.
  5. Users are able to choose whether their accounts are backed up daily or weekly.
  6. Users are also able to opt for a daily email notification of backups, weekly email notification, or no email notification.
  7. The system maintains a backup history identifying when accounts were backed up, whether or not the backups were successful, and how many files were backed up per online service account.

CONS

  1. There is no standardized format for backups because the backup file type is determined by the service providers.  For example:
    • Facebook photos are backed up on the site as photo files, but other Facebook elements (friends, statuses, links, notes, and events) are stored as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file – which I view using Microsoft Excel.
    • For Twitter accounts, users can download a PDF workbook containing the following data:  profile, updates, received direct messages, sent direct messages, favorites, and mentions.  Users may also download XML files for each of those individual data pieces as well as an XML file containing information about the user’s Twitter followers.
    • WordPress blogs and websites are backed up as a MySQL database in the sql.gz format.
  2. Currently, users may backup their personal Facebook profiles but not fan pages.  I asked Backupify CEO Rob May if there are plans to add backing up Facebook fan pages to the service’s offerings.  He informed me that they are working with Facebook on this functionality over the next two weeks, so this option should be available in the very near future.

My personal experience with Backupify over the past two months has been a very positive one.  Once the service adds the capacity to backup Facebook fan pages, it will be even more useful for arts organizations and governmental agencies using social media.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,


About the Author

David Dombrosky is the Executive Director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology, an applied research center at Carnegie Mellon University investigating ways in which technology can improve and enhance the practice of arts management and, when appropriate, developing technology solutions that meet critical needs in the field. David has presented technology workshops and panels for a numerous arts conferences and convenings. Additionally, he teaches a course on cultural policy and advocacy for Carnegie Mellon’s Master of Arts Management program. Prior to joining the CAMT team, David spent eight years at the Southern Arts Federation, where he designed and managed both regional and national programs in the visual, performing, media and literary arts. David currently serves on the board of directors for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture as well as the Art and Technology Advisory Committee for the Pittsburgh Technology Council. In 2007, David received the Emerging Leader Award from Americans for the Arts. He holds a M.A. in Communication Studies and B.A. degrees in Psychology and Speech Communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Related Posts



  • http://backuify.com Kristin

    David,

    Thanks for such a great and flattering service! It was also great to read your personal cons to take those into account. We are really looking forward to having the Fan Page backup soon, it is in high demand! We hope to be able to make each service’s output data in similar formats, but for now we are not able to do this because of different API specifications.

    Thanks again!

    Kristin
    Marketing Analyst
    backupify

  • Anonymous

    good business for backups of all of all social networks and computer data. but Gmail backup, I’ve always used single point of view so that all my mail is automatically stored locally on my hard drive. I’m pretty sure Mozilla Thunderbird also do so for free.

    carbonite offer code

Back to Top ↑

© 2012 Carnegie Mellon University



Back to Top ↑