Annual FB Birthday Report

As another birthday passes me by, I am overjoyed to report that. like last year, I got lots of birthday greetings. Unlike last year, I really know almost all of the people who greeted me on FB or by email. I didn't get even one birthday tweet, which I also consider "in good taste". Twitter doesn't seem the right forum to get or give birthday greetings.

Two main trends appeared this year. One is that I got fewer greetings. I don't know about you, but as I have more and more friends and contacts, it becomes more difficult to check in and birthday greet everyone every day. So I definitely got fewer greetings than last year, but the ones I got were a bit more meaningful, that is, from people that I feel more warmth towards.

The other change noted was that social networking, for some people, has become a substitute for real relationships. I saw a griping youtube clip on this a couple of years ago, saying that FB is for people who don't want to talk to you. In other words, if I don't want to talk to you, I can send you a Hatching Egg or an e-card, and I got out of my obligation to actually speak to you on my birthday.

I am sure lots of people wanted to talk to me and just couldn't get through because my phone was busy talking to the people who did get through. Almost all of my good friends had the good taste to actually call. Those who didn't probably forgot my birthday, which in my book, is totally cool. I don't usually tell anyone my birthday either, so if you don't pay attention to Plaxo or Facebook, I expect you to forget.

Unfortunately, in a few cases, this year, I definitely identified a few cases of people who left two-word wall postings because they were too cheap, too busy, or just didn't want to call. I'm not really insulted by that. It's just a trend, from my perspective, towards people becoming further from the people that they had originally intended to be closer to.