How To Back Up Your Social/Cloud Data: FaceBook, Twitter, Gmail, and more

Backing up the data on your computers and mobile devices is, of course, important. Hardware and software can be replaced, but data, once gone, is ... well, gone.

The process of backing up the data on your computer (and data from any mobile devices that you synched to it) can be straightforward and affordable. Almost everyone has done a local backup to an external hard drive, CD/DVD/BluRay, or even copied files to a USB flash drive. Some of you might have even used online services like BackBlaze.com, Carbonite.com or Mozy.com to name a few.

But what about data that's not on your computer, but in the cloud -- your Gmail messages, files stored in Google Docs, not to mention other office-in-the-cloud suites like Microsoft's Office 365? What about your WordPress blog, and your social media accounts like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or YouTube? It's one thing to back up messages, pictures and videos, but you might also need to save those comments, profiles, and templates ... just in case your cloud service provider gets hacked or has another major problem with its own backups.

Fortunately, there are also third-party services available if you want to make sure your online files are safe and sound. Here's a look at some of the sites and services offering social backup, either downloading to your computer, or to another location in the cloud. Some are B2B (Business-To-Business) with a high price tag, others are B2C (Business-To-Consumer) offering affordable accounts for individuals. The key here is to pay attention to what a given solution does. Some, for example, may be easy to browse and search your data online, but won't let you do a "restore." Other back up services may only save a portion of your data -- or you may have to do several different types of saves in order to back up everything.

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