SocialFolders: Sync Facebook, YouTube and more to your Computer

SocialFolders is a new app that allows you to sync and backup your data from various social networking sites, photo web apps and cloud storage services onto your computer. Right now it has support for Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Box, Google Docs, Instagram, Picasa, and Photobucket, while Twitter, Evernote and MySpace are to be added soon.

There are many apps that lets you download content from the cloud, however, SocialFolders gives you the feature of two way sync, allowing you to not only back up, but to also upload files to your online accounts.

After you’ve signed up, you can start connecting your accounts to the app.

If you have existing content on a service, you are given the choice to download that to your computer. To enable sync for future folders, remember to select the checkbox that says “Future folders that you may add on Box website.” Though, if your files or images are not organized in folders, they are automatically downloaded regardless of you selecting that option.

You can always go back to any connected service’s settings and select additional folders to sync or remove existing ones.

Now that you have connected your accounts, next step is to install the desktop app. It is available for Windows and Mac.

Once installed, you can find all your online files and images neatly organized in a folder called “my Social Folders” on your computer.

From here you can upload and download your files to the connected services by simply dragging-and-dropping them into the corresponding local folders, using Windows Explorer or the Mac’s Finder. This way, you can easily upload files, images and even create an entirely new set or folder on an online service by creating a new folder within SocialFolders locally. It’s as easy as that.

You can move this synced SocialFolders from its default location to anywhere on your computer using the desktop app, just like on Dropbox, however, unlike Dropbox, SocialFolders’ upload feature isn’t automated. You have to manually refresh your folders using the app’s system tray option.

Update: SocialFolders automatically uploads files, manually refresh is not required. Just add your files in a folder and it will get uploaded right away. And as an added bonus, currently there’s no limit on data. Upload and download to your heart’s desire.  Thanks Philippe!

SocialFolders is free and lets you manage 5GB of online data. Try it out yourself by signing up at the following URL.

Sign up: SocialFolders

If you don’t want to download files to your computer but still want to access multiple cloud services from explorer, then check out Otixo.