SocialSafe: Get Your Facebook Data Out of Facebook

Quick Pitch: SocialSafe is an effective, fun new application enabling Facebook users to manage their Facebook data offline on their home computer.

Genius Idea: Who owns your Facebook data? It’s a question that seems to make its way around the blogosphere every time Facebook changes their Terms of Service or someone’s account is deleted (with or without cause).

Regardless of who owns it (Facebook says you do), from a user experience, it’s almost impossible to get everything you put in to Facebook back out. SocialSafe, however, is a utility that helps you back up your Facebook account on your computer, keeping your data in your hands at all times.



After you pay the $2.99 fee via PayPal (I paid for it to test it out), SocialSafe will send you a license key and info on how to download and install the Adobe AIR desktop application. Once installed, you’ll be prompted to use Facebook Connect to access your account, after which you can opt to download your profile, friends, photo albums, and photos you’re tagged in. Once you’ve adjusted your settings, click to download and SocialSafe will grab your Facebook data in about five minutes or less (it took 2:06 for me).



After the download, you can use SocialSafe to get a desktop view of everything you selected to download. Content is organized by photos in their appropriate albums, friends in an address book of sorts, and your profile information as it appears online. The only thing that seems to be missing is your Facebook activity, and we hope to see SocialSafe find a way to give us the ability to download our status updates, comments, and the like.

The really nice thing about SocialSafe is that it works as a really cheap way to backup your Facebook account. Should you ever want to leave Facebook (if you can get past the guilt trap), or your account is deleted without warning, you have access to your friends, your photos, and the meat of your Facebook profile on your computer. It’s a small price to pay for relationships and photos that you’ve spent years building and acquiring through Facebook