Tag Archives: software

Managing your Reputation – Tips and Tools

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As the internet gets older so does our online digital footprint which builds up our online reputation.  Over time our online reputations have become more important on both a professional and personal basis.  Companies now look to our social media accounts to see if we have a presence there, they look at  what our behavior is like and how that will affect their companies. Companies too are protecting their own brand reputation online as this is what they use to trade on.

This article will detail some tips around how to manage your online reputation and provide links to a few useful tools that may help you to clean up you reputation online should you need to!

Top Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

  • Monitoring your reputation – whether you are an individual looking for a job or a company looking to understand how you are seen by others online you need to consider monitoring your reputation but what tools can you use to do this. Well simply one of the most useful tools about is Google Alerts. Just enter your search criteria and see what news and key search data comes up on you or your company. Also consider including key company employees in these alerts so that you can see who has influence within your company.
  • Repairing the Damage – So you’ve seen some content that you really think is damaging your reputation.  Here are some ways to fix the damage.  If it is content that you own. Remove it and then ask for the content to be taken down by the relevant search engines. For example Google has a page removal tool in its webmaster tools.  If the content is owned by someone else try getting in contact with them and requesting that it is taken down. If the content is defamatory you may wish to consider a cease and desist request through a lawyer.
  • On Social Media – Monitor all the comments on your social media channels including your blog. Comments from competitors or that are negative towards you or your company/ products are not necessarily a bad thing if you respond reasonably and quickly.  Leaving the comments to fester or responding overly defensively or in an unreasonable way will leave a lasting mark on your social channels. If there is a user that is constantly just leaving negative comments that aren’t constructive consider moderating the user or banning them from your page or blocking them from your channels.
  • Deleting content – If you are going to delete comments or content on your social networks it is worth considering taking a copy/ snapshot of what was up there before you delete it in case for any reason you need evidence of what had happened. Compliance can also be another good reason to back up your content before removing it from social media sites.  You can use tools like Digi Me by Socialsafe to do these backups and they do follow compliance standards.

If you have some top tips for managing your online reputation or have a story to share about how you have done this, share it in the comments area below.

And remember if you liked this article share it with your colleagues and friends using our sharing buttons!

SocialSafe v6.6.7 Released – Facebook Message Download Improvements & More

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We’ve just released SocialSafe v6.6.7 in order to address a few issues that have cropped up since the last release that were affecting some users, and while we were at it we also included some improvements to the app that were slated to be part of the next major release.

Those of you on OSX may have noticed the odd issue with the Scheduler recently. We’ve now made some changes in v6.6.7 that will improve the reliability of the Scheduler meaning that your SocialSafe will back up any new content to your library from you social networks at the times you specify.

Another big performance improvement we’ve made is to downloading Facebook Messages. We’ve managed to speed up the process of downloading Facebook Messages and the message counter issue (the numbers you see by the status bar while syncing) has been resolved.

Other fixes and improvements in SocialSafe v6.6.7 include:

– Fixed Missing Journal View Backup Stats Issue
– Fixed Missing Facebook Page Avatar Issue
– Fixed Sync Stall on Facebook Events
– Fixed broken PDF Export button in Collections
– Suppressed Black Screen Issue some Users Experienced

We weren’t able to replicate all of these issues ourselves, so if you still experience problems with any of the above then please get in touch to let us know, and we’ll do our best to resolve matters.

– the SocialSafe team

SocialSafe v6.6.6 Released – Facebook & Instagram Login Issues Fixed

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Yesterday we had to release SocialSafe v6.6.6, an unscheduled update that was necessary to address changes to both Facebook and Instagram’s login mechanisms, which would have caused issues if left unattended.

The changes made by Facebook meant that anyone trying to add a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Page to their SocialSafe library would have been unable to do so. Users who had already synced their Facebook Profiles or Facebook Pages would still have been able to sync new content however.

The Instagram issue was slightly different and manifested itself by returning errors when trying to add an Instagram account to SocialSafe or when syncing content to the library.

We have since fixed these issues, and seeing as we’d already ticked a few other items off our list that were scheduled to go in our next planned release, we included them in SocialSafe v6.6.6. This update includes:

  • Facebook Login Issue fix for both Personal Accounts & Facebook Pages
  • Instagram Login Issue fix
  • Fix for Users unable to clear Black Overlay Screen
  • Further Helper .NET Error Fix
  • Accounts View UI enhancement

We do try to keep disruption to a minimum when it comes to releasing an update so soon after another one, but we hope you understand the importance of us addressing this issue in a timely fashion.

Can’t Post To Facebook? What If You Couldn’t See Anything Either?

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Some people will have sat down at their computers, or unlocked their smartphones today, only to find that they can’t post to Facebook. The bug also meant that some users were unable to post comments, send messages, post photos or even Like content from over users or pages.

Those affected by the glitch were still able to use Facebook to view content, so it wasn’t a complete meltdown for everyone concerned. However, it just goes to show that websites do experience occasional period of downtime, and when handling the sheer volumes of data involved with keeping something such as Facebook up and running 24/7, there will be inevitable problems.

Social networks are increasingly being used more and more for business purposes, and for many small to medium operations, something as simple as a Facebook page performs a number of functions and holds a wealth of customer information for the page owner. If, as we have seen previously, the social networks experience problems or renders data inaccessible – even if only temporarily – this can have a big impact on businesses.

One way to minimise the effect any social network outages may have on your business is to make sure that you own a local copy of your data that you can access at any time. There are plenty of options out there that offer a social media backup service, but unless you store the data yourself, you can never guarantee that you will be able to lay your hands on it when you might need it the most.

SocialSafe is the only social content organiser that puts you in control of your data by storing it all on your own machine. Not only do you have peace of mind by way of a safe copy of your data, but you can do more with your content thanks to the built-in Insights functions, as well as the intelligent search and calendar features.

To start safeguarding your social data now, download the SocialSafe free trial and bring the content that matters to you to your very own desktop.

Norton Ditto Closes On October 9th – Back Up Your Content With SocialSafe

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Earlier in the week Norton reminded users of its social backup service – Ditto – that the service would be closing for good next Wednesday (October 9th). This was first announced in September, with users being given one month’s notice to find an alternative to Norton Ditto.

If you’ve been left in the lurch by this move, then we’d love to help you. Anyone who had been previously using Norton Ditto to back up their Facebook or Twitter accounts will find that SocialSafe offers the complete personal social data solution.

Not only can you feel safe in the knowledge that all the things you say on social networks are securely stored on your own machine, but all of the additional interactions such as comments, tags and likes are also backed up.

Going further than a simple data archive solution, your content can be browsed, searched and exported from within your SocialSafe journal, and with the existing Insights features already included within the app (more are coming!), you can look at your content in a whole new light.

Individuals and companies back up their social media content because they know there’s value locked up in their social network histories. That’s why we built a backup tool that not only gives you total ownership and control of your content but makes discovering that value easy and enjoyable.

If you’re a Norton Ditto refugee, then download the SocialSafe free trial from our website and take control of your whole story.

SocialSafe Funding Round – New Features, New Faces

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You may have read reports earlier this week about a recent funding round we completed, so we thought we’d tell you what we’ve got planned for the future.

Firstly, we’re looking to expand the team. You may have also seen that we’re recruiting for an iOS developer, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that we’re going to be expanding our product offering and creating a mobile version of SocialSafe!

As well as broadening the platforms, we’re also working on improving the app with lots of new features such as Collections, PDF export and additional Insights, and we’re also hard at work adding more networks and increasing the depth of coverage for the networks we already support.

With the recent funding round we also welcome a new member to the SocialSafe family, and that is Microsoft Researcher Emeritus Gordon Bell, who joins us as an investor and advisor. Gordon has long been the pioneer of ‘Life-Logging’ and his vision will be a huge asset to SocialSafe moving forward. His experience in other areas of computing should not be understated either – his work in the ’70s set the bar for computer performance and architecture for many years to come.

We’re really excited about what the future holds for SocialSafe, and we’d love for you to be with us each step of the way. Visit our website to start using SocialSafe for free, and get your whole story from your social networks. For more information about our funding round and our future plans, please take a look at this TechCrunch article from earlier in the week.

How To Back Up A Blog Via RSS – Video Demo

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Many of you will already be backing up your blogs with SocialSafe, but for those of you who aren’t here’s a very quick demo to show you how to get started:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDiP7bzgZxA]

As you’ll see in the video, you can back up a blog in SocialSafe by simply pasting in the blog URL and backing up the content via RSS. When you back up a blog using SocialSafe, any images contained within the posts will also be backed up, and these can be viewed in a separate display, as well as within the posts themselves. You’re also able to view the original posts online by simply clicking the link within SocialSafe.

Because the blogs are backed up via RSS, you may need to change the settings within your blog itself in order to allow as many posts as possible to be backed up by SocialSafe. We do have plans to integrate full support for individual blogging platforms in due course, but in the mean time you can back up, search, view and export your content via RSS.

To stay up to date with all of our how-to guides, tutorials and new feature demos, please head over to our YouTube channel and subscribe. If you aren’t already using SocialSafe, you can download our desktop social network backup tool for free.

SocialSafe v6.5.8 Released – Download Your Instagram Videos, Historic Data Pop-up and More

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We’ve just released SocialSafe v6.5.8 and this latest version contains a couple of brand new features never before seen in SocialSafe.

First up we have added support for Instagram Video. This allows SocialSafe users to safely download Instagram Videos to their own machine, along with all the comments, tags, and likes. This works in the same way that we currently support Instagram Photo download, meaning that you can also search and export Instagram Videos from within SocialSafe. Here’s how the Instagram videos appear among your other photos in the SocialSafe journal:

download instagram videos

We’ve also added historic data pop-up. This is a really cool new feature that shows you your most popular content on that day in previous years. Ordinarily this will be your most popular photo from Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, but if there are no photos on that day in years gone by, your most popular written update will be shown. You’ll see this appear discretely in the corner of your screen, even if you don’t have SocialSafe open, and this will occur at 1000 hrs daily. This is how the historic data pop-up will appear on your desktop:

on this day

It wasn’t all just shiny new features with this release, there was some general maintenance that we had to take care of. We were aware that some of you had experienced problems with stalling syncs when backing up certain types of content from Facebook and Twitter – these have now been fixed, along with a .NET error and a sync looping issue. We also made some minor bug fixes and UI improvements.

We hope you like the new features we’ve added to SocialSafe, and as ever, if you have any further suggestions please let us know through our Feedback Forum, on our Facebook Page, get in touch via Twitter, or on Google+ or LinkedIn.

Facebook Keeping Engineers Happy With “Hackamonths”

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Facebook have come up with an interesting way of keeping workforce morale up and preventing employee burnout. The Palo Alto company last week formally announced its internal initiative that allows some engineers to leave their current team in favour of working on a side project of their choosing. As well as the primary goal of preventing burnout, “Hackamonth” as it is being called, should result in some cool new products.

In the last year, Facebook trialled the Hackamonth initiative with 35 engineers being encouraged to submit project ideas that would require around a month’s worth of work. It was this process that spawned Facebook’s new Deals feature. The Hackamonth idea is an extension of Facebook’s longtime tradition of engineering “hackathons,” overnight events complete with beer, food, and DJs. During hackathons, employees must only abide by one rule: They can’t work on anything related to their everyday projects.

Slater Tow, a Facebook spokesman said: “For engineers, hackathons are opportunities to dive into any other project they’ve had their eye on. It’s a chance to shake things up for a night.” He added: “Hackamonth is a way to perpetuate this hackathon mentality into a full month.”

All in all, it’s a pretty smart move from the social networking giant. Not only are they keeping their employees sane and happy, but also getting them to reach their creative best without any bureaucratic restraints stifling their cognitive flow.