(The Root) — What would you do if, for some reason, all of your tweets or Instagram photos disappeared tomorrow? It may not be something everyone thinks about, but I have to admit I'd feel a definite sense of loss if I woke up and all of my 2,125 tweets had disappeared into thin air. A new website aims to prevent that by archiving all of your social media data.
Recollect, designed by three ex-Flickr employees, is a service designed to "archive and explore your digital life." You can back up all of your tweets, photos from Instagram or Flickr and Foursquare check-ins. Your data are always available for download to your computer as well. The service also archives any "likes," comments or replies to any of your posts. The ability to search through the data is another feature that allows you to easily take a trip back down memory lane anytime you want, browsing by keyword or in chronological order.
But all of this social media security does come at a cost. Plans are $6, $12 or $24 per month, depending on how much data you want to store and how many accounts on each social network you want to add. Recollect is currently being offered in public beta (so you don't need an invitation to join). Sign-up is free, and right now you get the first 30 days free. And don't worry, Facebook is being added as we speak.
We already back up photos and documents that live on our hard drives, so it would seem to make sense that you might want to hold on to that great tweet that got 100 replies or all of those Instagram photos you spent so much time choosing filters for. Would you spend six bucks a month to save your digital life?
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