Soocial: Now with better backups!
After having had a bit of a messup with two of our beta users, we decided it was time for a feature we had wanted to include al ready quite some time ago. So after quick hacking by our Soocial heroes Tijn, Simon and yours truly we now have some more extensive backup facilities.
This is just the beginning of what we have in store for easy backups but it’s a start that will put our current beta users at ease that their contacts are safe.
We’ve added a backups tab in the main navigation where a list of your backups is shown. Here you can view and download your backups.
In this backup section a simple overview of backups is shown. Currently we create these backups after you add a new connection. For example after you add a GMail engine, we’ll get all the contacts you currently have in GMail, create a backup of these contacts, store them here and send you an email with this backup. Then we remove the contacts from GMail and replace them with Soocial1. The same thing happens with the first sync from a phone, your Mac or Highrise (except we don’t delete contacts from these connections).
We’ll be adding features soon so you can create your own snapshot, and restore from a backup easily.
1 Some people have asked why we remove all GMail contacts. It has to do with the fact that for most people, their GMail contacts are a mess, and polluted so much that 90% of their contacts are bogus anyway. So we choose to give people the option to manually go through them and add contacts they want to keep. We hope to add a better (and more efficient) merging algorithm soon that tackles this problem.
And remember Kids, backing up your Data is sexy, chicks will like a guy who knows a backup tape. :)
Hey there...if you are going to offer 300 invites through TechCrunch and your site crashes, what happens to those of us that got a bare screen with a few icons and no fields to enter our info for an invite?
How about a little courtesy for those of us who are willing to test this application and offer our feedback?
"store them here and send you an email with this backup"
a few questions...
don't get me wrong.. i love the idea but i always want to know what "backup" and "store" really means....
you still keep the backup where.. ?
Mojo: leave an e-mail addy next time! :) We also commented on TC that people could send us an e-mail as compensation.
And thanks Edward, I'll try and answer your questions:
We store our backups on our webservers, which in turn are backed up too. :) We also send you the contacts via e-mail so you won't feel like we're hoarding your contacts. It's up to you what you want to do with those backups.
Basically, the backups are one big VCF file with all your contact data. We make them available in the Soocial webapp and are there for your peace of mind, and give you the option to restore your contacts would you ever have a need for it.
How we did the initial sync with GMail has evolved and now we've added functionality so you can merge your the contacts you already have in Soocial with GMail. (Instead of just deleting and replacing)