
Show HN: SocialFolders, "Dropbox for social" - martinpannier
Hey fellow HN-ers,<p>I'd like to ask HN about my latest startup: SocialFolders. We take a Dropbox-like approach to managing your content on your social networks by mirroring all the content you have on these networks in folders on your computer. Moving this content around, between folders or between services, is mirrored in the all-mighty "cloud" (ugh, I hate this word).<p>We'd love to know what you think. We think our approach solves the problem of managing content at scale.<p>We put together a quick 2'30 screencast to show HN how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s2TFsVezZQ<p>If you want to try it out, you can download the app (for free of course) on socialfolders.me.<p>Thanks for your feedback. Next step: adding a kitty to the video and sending it to Mashable!<p>Edit: upvote the clickable links if you can please :)
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martinpannier
Clickable links: screencast: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s2TFsVezZQ>,
website: <http://socialfolders.me>

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kmfrk
Great project! I remember seeing the possibilities of something along these
lines, when I browsed the recipes of ifttt that crawled your social feeds for
photos by yourself and others and saved them in your Dropbox folder. If this
folder were shareable, it would create a different social network all by
itself! And better yet, I wouldn't have to sign up for silly social networks
and Facebook in order to get access to that data.

I don't know if this is disruptive, but I hope this will help break the data
lock-ins networks like Facebook and Twitter photo services are using to retain
and attract users. (And what happens if one of the sites go belly-up with all
your data?)

If I could make one suggestions, the site as it currently is looks like one
for a generic software download. You should, eventually, try to make it look
more friendly and inviting as if to say that this is a social ecosystem of
sorts.

Best of luck! If you're in SF or NYC, you probably won't need it with all the
people who'll throw themselves at you over a great idea like this. :)

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martinpannier
Thanks kmfrk (a mouthful)

We'll try and make the website more friendly. As ever, juggling with multiple
priorities.

We're in SF, haven't seen people throwing themselves at us just yet, but can't
wait :)

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davezatch
Just a heads up, if you click on "Getting Started" at the bottom it sends you
to the "getting-started-mac" page, and the download is for mac. If I click
directly on "download" it knows I'm on windows, but through the getting
started vector it serves me the wrong link.

Otherwise, looks amazing, gonna give it a whirl after work.

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martinpannier
Thanks Dave, I'll fix it ASAP

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w33ble
I'm definitely not your client base as the few things I do put on social
profiles all come from my hard drive anyway, so I have no need to back up or
export them.

That said, this service looks very slick and kmfrk makes a great point about
using it to liberate your photos and such and make them available to people
that don't have accounts. For example, links to facebook photos are useless
for me since I don't have an account there, but if the people uploading their
photos there could also have them mirrored to SocialFolders or even another
network where I either have an account or don't need an account to view them,
that would be sweet. If they could have that happen without doing anything
extra on their own (after installing the software, of course), that would be
pretty amazing!

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entropie
A simple upvote isnt enough. Awesome idea!

Edit: please give us a linux client.

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david_a_r_kemp
Please give us a cli linux client, so I can run it on my NAS

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spindritf
Being able to run it without GUI, on a server or NAS, as you mentioned, would
be great -- better connection, always online, perfect fit for a software like
that.

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ed209
Promising start. My mum is always on at me to send her the pics of my daughter
that I put on Facebook. It would be cool if I could grant her access to my
Facebook folder (at the moment I accomplish this through dropbox) but your
product removes a couple of steps. Will certainly keep an eye on this one :)

Have you seen <http://theopenphotoproject.org/> ?

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martinpannier
Actually we have! We're in contact with Jaisen Mathai to integrate the
OpenPhoto project ASAP.

Thanks for the feedback we're going to integrate easy folder sharing as soon
as humanly can! :)

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webmat
Sharing with the parents FTW!

The service is looking great, and I'm glad you guys have a clear (and super
reasonable at 9.99$/year) business model from the start!

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RobertKohr
The price really should be in the FAQ. I am guessing that it is the most
frequently asked question.

I don't want to go through your funnels before I get hit with a price.

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dmragone
I concur - please put pricing in the FAQ. It's a great service, you shouldn't
hide the cost. Maybe I'm missing it on the front page, but I couldn't find the
price anywhere (and only saw that the download is free, which is different
from the price of the service, and of course holds no value without the
service).

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mikeknoop
I'll admit I was initially turned off by the title of the post . It's really
"buzz word" heavy -- but I checked out the YouTube video demo anyway and this
is a great and much needed tool.

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martinpannier
Wait until we get out or geolocated mobile app too!

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peteforde
Cool idea, but my $0.02 is that this would be a distraction from your core
value proposition.

Nobody signing up for this is thinking "man, I can't wait for the geolocated
iPhone app version".

Focus on the core!

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Simucal
I figured he was being sarcastic.

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martinpannier
I was.

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peteforde
Oh man. Well, that was embarrassing.

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AndrewWarner
1) Glad you're charging because it makes me feel like you'll be around.

2) I'm trying to sync 1 file and it's taking over 20 minutes (so far)

3) It'd be nice to allow one-way sync. I don't want to flood my MB Air's tiny
drive with every photo I sent to Flickr, but I would want to upload all of my
Air's photos.

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martinpannier
Please direct support requests to martin@socialfolders.me

I'll take a look at your account to see what went wrong - send me your email.

Agreed on the 1-way sync. Good idea!

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bobwebb
This is awesome! Thanks for providing this service - there are loads of nice
pictures on Facebook that I've been meaning to make a backup of for ages, now
there's a tool that lets me do that without any fuss.

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edbyrne
Export/Backup for your Social Networks - great idea.

Can I get more than just photos (files)? Can I save my data or will that get
you banned from a few of the providers you integrate with!

I use Backupify for this 'anti-Cloud' type service - it backs up my Gmail.
Since I use more than one PC, I'd like to see this do similar to Dropbox -
sync local, in the Cloud, and be accessible through clients on any device. I
suppose I could do that by putting the SocialFolders into Dropbox - but I'm
not sure I want to pay on the double then.

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iusable
This is one of those ideas that you see and go 'wasn't this done already?' But
in fact it wasn't!

Love the idea and the intro. Instant User!

Tons of questions about the syncing features with different services etc.

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martinpannier
Shoot your questions! Here or martin@socialfolders.me

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djbender
If I have the same 100MB file set on multiple social sites through
SocialFolders, does that mean I have the set on my local hard drive multiple
times as well?

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rheeseyb
Looks really good. First thought - you need some sort of feedback to let the
user know that their files are downloading - I've linked my Facebook account
and it's downloading hundreds of photos, but I thought it was broken as it
just created a bunch of empty folders. The only way I could confirm that it is
working was by checking my used quota. I'm using OSX Lion by the way...

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martinpannier
Agreed. We're working on a better menu bar icon. Will have small blue rotating
arrows :)

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rheeseyb
Nice :)

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yatsyk
How can you compare it to Locker [1] ?

[1] <https://github.com/LockerProject/Locker>

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martinpannier
Mainly, we're file-based and we mirror all file mgmt operations on your
computer. So you always have your content with you. And any offline edits (to
your SocialFolders Google Docs for example) is applied online as soon as you
reconnect.

And we have a business model.

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drtse4
Nice idea and beautifully implemented, you just gained a new user. The "moving
between services" is the real killer feature, imo.

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oozcitak
Great idea and beautiful execution. I just copy/pasted a few photos from
Instagram to Facebook. I will definitely use this.

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alias1
Very nice idea and so far the service looks pretty good. Congratulations :) I
did find it a little hard to find the different pricing levels/what I get for
them. I think having a page dedicated to the different account types (free,
premium, etc) linked off the main menu would be good.

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mikecaron
This looks like a great frontend for FUSE (or MacFUSE by Google,
<http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/>). I think you guys nailed the user
experience because FUSE can be really difficult to setup for n00bs.

~~~
martinpannier
I'd totally forgotten about that project, used to use it with MacFusion. We'll
check out the project again to see which of the services we could integrate
(or what code/libs we could use).

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quanfucius
So what happens when I copy my SocialFolder into my Dropbox folder? Does the
universe implode? :D

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joeconway
This is a really nice idea, well done! I'm going to try this out for a few
days but I fully expect to but an annual premium account. I'd quite like it if
i could turn off the menubar icon in OS X though.

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instakill
The taskbar menu shows how much I've used of my quota, but what would be very
useful would be the dropbox-esque bit of info that tells me how much of it has
actually sync'd.

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lazylland
This has serious legs, martin. Well done :) A similar idea has been in my
"would-be-nice" list for eons, but its amazing to see it actually work.

Wishing you great success! Happy hacking !

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aDemoUzer
Great idea. <http://socialfolders.me/download-pc/> screenshots looks crappy.

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tuananh
Great idea, however If I want to share a set of photos on multiple services, I
have to waste a lot of space !? will symlink works?

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martinpannier
Yep - for now

We are evaluating the feasability of using symlinks (the problem being cross-
platform execution).

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vineet
I like it.

It did however take me till the last 30 seconds of the video to actually get
how this would be useful to me.

Need to play with it to get you more feedback.

~~~
Stenerson
I agree. I thought it looked neat until the last 30 seconds, once I saw the
drag and drop uploads I needed to have it.

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neilk
If I modify a file locally, does that get mirrored elsewhere?

Also, I assume that such modifications aren't propagated to the other copies?

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martinpannier
Yes & you assume correctly.

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webmat
The "remember me" option on the login doesn't seem to work. Not a big deal,
but just pointing it out :-)

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carlsednaoui
Sweet video! I would suggest adding a clickable link on your youtube video
description.

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instakill
I am the only one that gets a time-out when trying to download the app?

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martinpannier
Shouldn't be any problems the file is hosted on S3… Weird. Can you try again
and shoot me an email at martin@socialfolders.me if it still doesn't work?

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leouznw
great idea, so great that i'm helping to spread on facebook... Still has field
to find a way to keep just one file to all social networks, but maybe it will
make the end user confused...

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kin
I can find so much use from this. Great job!

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instakill
Lovely demo video. Who made that for you?

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martinpannier
The screencast parts are home-made, Screenflow FTW.

The first 30" were made by a freelance on Elance.

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brador
How much did that freelancer cost (approx.)?

Also, "Hero + 3 below" just works, I suggest changing the front page to that
layout for greater impact.

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martinpannier
$800

His original video is here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ZgtOZJVKE>

Edit: sorry, didn't get the part about the "Hero + 3 below". Care to explain?

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brador
Grid design system. Hero (one big unit in middle of the screen) +3 (3 smaller
units just below).

I tried to find a quick example with blank content, but this is the best I can
pull at short notice: <http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/examples/hero.html>

Question: Are you guys funded? Looking for funding? and do you store the data
serverside in addition to the users device?

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martinpannier
Got it, thanks!

Answer: no - yes - no

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ThaddeusQuay2
It's nice, but it doesn't quite "mirror all the content I have" because it
doesn't transfer comments. I claim ownership of all comments left by me, and
by others, on my content. When a social network deletes a picture of mine, all
the comments are lost, as well. This breaks the conversation, and cannot be
fixed by simply re-uploading the original content. I understand that you
cannot transfer comments from one social network to another, but the basic
problem remains. Solve that, and you've got a real winner.

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adir1
Sorry - this is so last century. We are heading Into the Cloud, not into "get
my social content to my PC" era...

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martinpannier
Yeah I mean you are sooo right, look at Photo Stream! I mean, Photo Stream is
SO last century. Hmmm.

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adir1
Afraid so - I love Apple devices, but Photo Stream is completely unusable to
me. Why should I take up all that precious mobile device space with many
copies of my Photos - of which I have thousands to begin with? If you have 10
photos and clueless about how to upload them - perhaps it's something that
would be neat for you...

