A Comparative Study of Social Media Data Archiving Software

Abstract

Abstract The importance and growth of the amount of data available on social media have made organizations use Social Media Data Archiving Software (SMDAS) to collect and archive their data. This study compares the features of three SMDAS: ArchiveSocial, Pagefreezer, and Smarsh. First, by surveying the developers’ websites and catalogs, the features of all three software products are identified and classified into four areas. After using statistical methods and the Chi-square test, significant differences among features of the software in each domain are investigated. “Access to deleted records,” “automatic archiving,” “archiving of native formats,” “archive categorization,” “archive sharing,” “simple and advanced search,” “online service,” and “advanced discovery and monitoring functions” were the shared features. A significant difference was noted in the domain of security and data preservation, with Pagefreezer software offering more features than the other two software. In the other areas, no significant difference was observed. Knowledge of SMDAS can help librarians and other information professionals choose and use it wisely. Comparing features may also benefit companies that are developing SMDAS. The literature suggests to use the studied software; nevertheless, few studies discussed the software’s features in detail. This article has made a valuable contribution to comparing the software’s features.