SocialSafe, the Facebook back-up tool from 1minus1 and Julian Ranger‘s iBundle, has added support for Twitter so that users can make an offline back-up of their tweets, @mentions, Direct Messages, profile and follower structure.
Built using Adobe Air, the app supports both Mac and Windows and, unlike the likes of Backupify, shuns the Cloud for back-ups. Instead all data is stored locally on a user’s PC where, of course, it can still be pushed to the Cloud using a complimentary back-up service but otherwise data integrity and security is left very much in the user’s own hands, which might be a good or bad thing.
Somewhat similar to Twistory, once you’ve connected your Twitter account to the SocialSafe app, tweets are downloaded and offered up via a calendar view whereby they can be browsed by date. It’s quite interesting to see what nonsense or words of wisdom you were tweeting on a certain day, say a year ago, although you’ll need to be prepared for the realisation that maybe you’re not quite as clever or funny as you think you are. Trawling through some of my own tweets (@sohear), I came to the conclusion that some tweets are best forgotten. However, if your account is hijacked via a phishing attack or for some other reason you get locked out – something like SocialSafe could be a lifesaver.
That said, for long-time Twitter users, SocialSafe doesn’t go back far enough, due to Twitter’s API limits presumably, although all future tweets can be backed-up incrementally, and for those who have more than 5,000 followers the associated avatars don’t get pulled down. The latter is being addressed in a future update.
As noted, aside from newly added support for Twitter, SocialSafe enables Facebook back-ups too, which I suspect is of more value than Twitter. This includes photos, friend structure, status updates and the like. A future version will also add Links, Likes and Photo Comments.
Two versions of SocialSafe exist: a free and Pro version, with the latter (costing a one-off payment of £4.99/$6.99/€5.99) unlocking certain features, such as Twitter support.
We have 250 copies to giveaway. To qualify on a first-come first-served basis, email SocialSafe (techcrunch@socialsafe.net) with TechCrunch in the title and include your First Name, Last Name and email address.
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