Archify.com – Browse Social Network Contents

The world wide web changes faster than what our chances to keep track with it allow. A consequence of this is that we may loose some contents we saw around on some website, and especially in social networks. When we come back to check it later, it may no longer be there at hand. We know it is somewhere, but looking that up can really take much of our time.

Archify is a web app that will let us keep what we browse through the web, so that we can find it some time later when we come back to our web navigator. It creates for us a personal archive of pages we’ve visited, freezing them for us so that we can see them exactly the same.

Max Kossatz, from the founding team of Archify, who kindly responded some questions via e-mail, explained to us how they came up with the idea:

“Gerald was running a social media agency and had to surf the whole day on the net to find stuff for his clients. That’s how he got the idea about archiving everything in one place for you. he then asked me what I think about the idea and I said “great idea, but we need a screenshot too!

We then presented the idea at a barcamp in Vienna and got 150 email adresses from the 80 people in the audience, so we decided to make a company!”

So in this way, Gerald Back and Max Kossatz invested the money they had obtained from selling the previous companies they owned, to give birth to this new idea which is almost one year old already. It’s an interesting aspect that guys from Austria are behind Archify. We are used to hear news about internet, startups and new technologies coming from the US, especially since Steve Job’s passing out last year and the iPhone and smart phones boom going on for some time already. However, news concerning the internet can appear from all over the world. Archify somehow proves it, or at least shows us that interesting things can happen. This is what Max commented about this point.

“…there is a small but very good startup scene in Vienna, but nearly no angels [investors] and just one VC for internet startups. Thats the reason why we participated in Startupbootcamp Copenhagen to build up a network and get in contacts with mentors, angels, VCs”.

How does Archify work?

Simply enough. The main feature of this app consists of a plugin you must install in your web browser. You can click the corresponding link directly on the site to start the download. While writing this review I used Firefox 9.0.1, where the plugin needed to restart the browser. Maybe it’s a bit hard synchronizing with Firefox software and all, but direct installation without restarting could save users from this slight inconvenience.

So then, with the plug-in installed, which will be a button on your browser’s menu, you can start indexing the pages you are interested in. This is done automatically, and the program will store on the cloud our navigation. They go visual also; you not only save an URL and some tag to identify it on a menu, but the software keeps a screenshot so that you can see the website as you saw it that time you decided to keep it. Personalized navigation at the fullest, we could say. It is like having your own search engine for the things you have seen around on the net, because besides storing it, you will have a search engine too.

Some downsides

The theory is fine when you read about them on their website, and of course, the service sounds appealing. However, some details seem to be unsolved or then they did not explain themselves really well.

When trying to sign up, for example, some problems arise. Because the app is still running on a closed beta version, you have to ask for an invitation by leaving you e-mail on their page. But then, it is not clear why they offer a log in function using previous accounts you may have, like Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail. And if you try to log in with these, you can’t because they keep asking you for a password. Some other people have encountered this difficulty too. If you enter to their Facebook profile, a person posted on their wall this same issue.

The plug-in, however, may be downloaded and installed on your browser. But what sense does it make if you are not still signed up for the service?

Less important, but which arises some curiosity anyway, is the fact that the logo in the plug-in is still the one they used for their previous branding, when they went under the name of egoArchive. Well, they are working to change that soon, as they claim on their site. However, some more effort at synchronization would be fine, just for image’s sake. Don’t you think so, guys?

Pricing and fees

Archify.com is bound to get a great amount of users at least in the beginning, because the basic service accounts will remain free of charge. This of course can motivate potential users in the sense that they won’t have nothing to loose by giving it a try. Some future features, which will include filters, labels, and favorites will be part of premium accounts. Max is quite excited about this, as he told us:

“We will integrate a lot of new services quite soon and we are for example starting to detect mediafiles in the tweets, fb-updates and your surfing, so you will be able to search for something like: “show me all the videos about Steve Jobs that i and my friends on Facebook saw/posted yesterday and that are longer than 2 minutes”. Another feature that we really like is geosearch. You will be able to say? show me all the pages I saw when I was in Paris at the Le Web Place'”.

However, their site doesn’t tell us what those fees will be and how many “levels” of service we can use. Anyway, while using the beta version, we’ll be able to use all features. This will allow anyone to give a try to the whole program, so it might be a nice chance to get the idea and decide afterward which service we’ll use.

Archify’s service seems to generate much interest, provided the coverage it got on important news sites and blogs. But it is clear, I think, that they still have some work ahead. It seems they are doing it, certainly, but users need to be patient to get the whole features up and running. For how long, depends on the people behind Archify. So far they seem to be on the right track.