A deep case of potential Schadenfraude over the last few days. When we developed SocialSafe to backup your Facebook we did so because a few people we knew had had their Facebook accounts closed or somehow lost. We never realsied then the power of having your digital diary available to you on your own PC/Mac, nor the level to which people were unaware that storing data in the ‘cloud’ does lead to vulnerabilities. Those vulnerabilities have been greatly in the news in the last few days – Facebook have had huge problems with people unable to access their accounts, Microsoft have lost lots of users’ data with their Sidekick phones and Apple have lost people’s data when using guest accounts on the new Snow Leopard operating system.
The lesson learned is that all data is vulnerable to loss. I am personally from the CTRL-S generation – when computers and software was sufficiently unstable that you learnt to save your data, CTRL-S, every time you completed a thought, a paragraph or 5 minutes had passed. With the increasing stability and reliability of software this CTRL-S philosphy has slowly diminhsed – yet recent events show that nothing is that assured when it comes to digital data whether that be on the cloud or on your own machine. The lesson is always have backups/copies of your data – in the case of Facebook this does mean that our application, SocialSafe, is a necessary application, if only for backup purposes, Should I be pleased about this? – well thats where the schadenfraude feeling comes into play – no is the answer – yes its a great Facebook backup tool, but I’d wish that the digital diary aspect from our Time Capsule functionality was the main driver for its use.
However you do it though, please make sure you have your data, whether the originals are in the cloud or on your own computer, backed up safely in another location. No one, especially me, likes to create anything twice and losing part of my digital life is a painful experience.