Head Tale

The history of Facebook birthdays is not all that exciting, but some habits?—?like uploading videos and tagging people?—?the company had to teach. Wishing someone a happy birthday on the platform came naturally, and it’s now a function Facebook owns. The platform didn’t introduce notifications for birthdays until 2013; before that, the side of your feed included a short list of birthdays, and it was up to you to act.

Facebook has long had features where they prominently promote who is having a birthday each day and encourage users to post a note on the birthday person’s page.

Today happens to be my birthday so I thought I’d share some thoughts on the way that Facebook has worked to replace Hallmark as our main source of birthday greetings (and possibly devalued the birthday as a result?)

1. My first birthday notification actually arrived around 6pm the day before my birthday.  Turns out it was a friend who now lives in New Zealand who joked that he’s writing from the future!
2. One cool thing about Facebook birthday greetings is, in an age where social media has led to increasing polarization, even among friends and family members, the greetings tend to be studiously non-partisan.  To put it another way, I got birthday wishes from people ranging from evangelical right-wing Christians to left-wing agitators to even a couple Oilers fans! 😉
3. The majority of greetings are a simple variation of “Happy Birthday Jason!” but I always appreciate those who personalize it a bit – whether I know it’s a custom greeting they use to put their own “signature” touch on every greeting they write for friends or if it’s something they customize just for me (one posted a wrestling gif, someone else made a library reference.)
4. I have about ~1000 Facebook friends (many of whom are brief acquaintances or even people I’ve never met in real life) and I’d estimate that I usually end up with between 100-150 birthday wishes which is a pretty good “conversion rate” as far as these things go (which, make no mistake, is what Mark Zuckerberg wants, and part of the reason I admit that I’m not someone who posts birthday wishes for others on Facebook very often.)
   

   There is a certain hierarchy to Facebook birthday greetings?—?they are not doled out equally; some people are deemed more worthy than others. According to a 2013 Cal State University Long Beach study, women in relationships receive the most happy birthday wishes. Men in relationships get the second most, followed by single women, and finally single men. (Researchers had hypothesized that single women would be the most popular on their birthdays.)

5. Part of the ritual is that most people post some sort of “Thanks for all the birthday wishes!” post after their birthday and then that triggers a whole bunch of “Happy Belated Birthday!” posts as well!
6. There are others, probably nervous about getting blasted with “This person also commented” notifications, who will also send their birthday wishes via private message.
7. It’s weird to think that Facebook has done something that’s both made life easier (never forget an important date again!) and worse (feel obligated to post birthday wishes every day of your life for people you barely know.)
8. Even if it’s not obvious, seemingly harmless Facebook birthday wishes have a commercial aspect as it helps Facebook draw its behind-the-scenes connections between people that it, in turn, monetizes in various ways and uses as a way to encourage people to share more on their platform.
9. I got maybe a dozen non-Facebook related birthday wishes.  The kids (staying with their grandparents this week) called.  Shea took me out for supper (so glad she remembered!)  My aunt called me.  A few co-workers who knew it was my birthday because I joked when we scheduled a meeting on my birthday that I might not be too productive wished me a happy birthday. And the best man at my wedding who’s been my friend since before we started kindergarten sent a text (though I’m 99% sure he saw the reminder on Facebook!)

Think about how you used to “do birthdays” online before Facebook. You probably didn’t have a notification system to remind you it was someone’s birthday. Once alerted to the day’s significance, you may have made a beeline to your computer, where you either composed a nice email or, if you were especially flashy or a member of my preadolescent friend group, visited Bluemountain.com. There, you picked a free e-card from the library, customized it, and sent it along. Maybe you repeated some version of this on Myspace or LiveJournal. But no one automated the process. Facebook’s been around for 12 years now, and you could argue that its most consistent, functional, and happiness-inducing feature is basically a calendar reminder.