Social media, Facebook especially, changes the way we celebrate birthdays. Before Facebook (remember ?), people did celebrate birthdays the traditional way : either you would remember the day and be a good brother/friend/colleague, either you’d just miss it and would convince yourself not to forget the next one !
Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times describes well how Facebook changed this, talking of a new social economics of the Facebook birthday. Provided the correct birthdate is given by your friend, you now have a good means not to forget it, and when you grow of age, see (or check ?) your friends come and say their nice words to you. If the required engagement is less strong than having to remember previous celebrations, it’s still a good way to keep in touch or try to have a relationship revival.
But do people really see or act as it’s your real birthday ? An experiment led by David Plotz on Slate had funny findings. Trying to set three of its own birthday on one month, David experienced that a huge majority of his friends would celebrate his birthday the same way even with so little time between the dates !
Birthdays on Facebook also have an attractive effect for brands. As you may know, it is possible to target a Facebook Ad to people having their birthdays. A good mean for a brand to take advantage of a specific day when you’re – sociopaths excluded – happy and supposedly more receptive than the rest of the year. Wal-mart recently bought Social Calendar, an app on Facebook that helps you remember birthdates and post personalized cards and gifts.
We’re looking forward to see good digital campaigns using the birthdays on Facebook. Oh, and as always on Facebook, don’t shout too loud or you’ll have 50 000 guests on your birthday ☺
Martin Pasquier