Cloud Storage for Social Media: Twitter Backup
There are moments in life when the universe decides to play a cruel joke on you and just as your company's files are being transfered to a new data center, a truck driver rams into a power transformer and cuts power to the server rack that is meant to be receiving your precious files. And after that, your other back up gets wiped off its server by an over-zealous system administrator. And then after that, you're helping your CEO write an apologetic message to members. That "hypothetical" story is meant to illustrate the point that backup in multiple locations (via cloud or otherwise) is important.
Why backup your email? from BackupMy. Net on Vimeo.
BackupMy.Net is a service that allows individuals to back up their tweets, email accounts, blogs and photos. Rather than having to install or configure files for backup, the Austin-based service offers users the chance to store their online data in the cloud. As illustrated by their above email service video, Backupmy.Net may be invaluable in protecting users from accidental deletions, service suspension and outages. While RWW would never suggest you store your passwords in your emails, there is some merit to the service. The blogging and email backup service is particularly useful when you're working with clients who are less than tech-savvy and prone to deleting their files. Similar cloud-based services include Lifestream Backup, Mozy and Memopal.
As for the Twitter back up service, BackupMyTweets is fast to index files and offers users the chance to download their backed up tweets in HTML, JSON or XML format. Nevertheless, one of our biggest complaints with this service is that it auto-tweets a message to your friends upon joining. Love it or leave it, at least Spymaster offers you in-game points to pimp its service to your friends. If BackupMyTweets allowed users to choose to tweet about the service in exchange for discounts on premium offers, the Twitter message might not feel like such an intrusion. Once they overcome the automated Twitter spam issue, the service as a whole will likely prove a useful tool for those looking to store 3rd party hosted materials.
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BackupMyTweets only sends out that automated tweet if you opt for the free version. The version that does not send out the automated tweet will set you back $2.95 a year. In my opinion, the service is worth every penny.
After signing up, the service first takes a while to generate the backup, then it sends out the automated tweet on your behalf and sends you the URL to the archive. The automatied tweet is not boilerplate—you can modify it as you like.
I've used BackupMyTweets successfully for the past month or so and I am very pleased I found out about it. It automatically backs up my tweets every day and is always up-to-date. The backup is provided as an HTML, JSON and as an XML file.
I've already suggested to the team to optionally also include @replies, @mentions and perhaps one's entire friends' timeline.
Another option for backing up Twitter is http://www.tweets2mail.com and it also includes mentions, all friend updates, replies, and direct messages (sent and received). Check it out sometime.
I think the 10 bucks per year option to back up my tweets and Flickr photos etc to my own Amazon S3 account via LifestreamBackup a much sounder proposition.
Don't forget about http://TweetBackup.com
Open disclosure: I am related to SocialSafe I mention below.
I agree totally that one should backup your data - whatever social or work site you are using. The free web services provide us with a great capability, but they are not infallible and most of their T&Cs do say it is up to the user to have a backup of their data as the service does not guarantee they will not lose it. It is for this reason we created the SocialSafe backup tool for Facebook - see www.socialsafe.net