Comments on: Facebook, Eager to Grow its Gifting Platform, Launches Birthday Notification Service

By: Facebook Pushing Birthday Virtual Gifts on Profile Pages

Facebook Pushing Birthday Virtual Gifts on Profile Pages — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:14:33 +0000

[...] addition, Facebook launched its own birthday notification service later that month. As we wrote at the time, “While this change also may appear minor at first, it’s a signal [...]

By: Social Media News Glut? | AF-Design

Social Media News Glut? | AF-Design — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:00:06 +0000

[...] the following post from Facebook about birthday notifications. It was picked up by Inside Facebook with commentary on how it may impact applications providing similar services as did TechCrunch and [...]

By: Raj Lalwani

Raj Lalwani — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:26:57 +0000

Justin:

Overall a balanced portrayal of the developments. Here are my thoughts which I had also posted on TechCrunch.

I am the founder and CEO of SocialCalendar, the largest calendar app on Facebook by Monthly Active Users and ranked #14 overall with 4,564,384 monthly active users and 6,838,513 total users. According to an article by VentureBeat, SocialCalendar was the fastest growing app on Facebook after the redesign.

We are always in touch with Facebook and Facebook had informed us of these developments. We were always more than birthdays – Mashable had recently written “SocialCalendar does a lot more than I expected from a social networking application.”

While it will impact us, it only means that we have to constantly move forward and provide substantially more value. At SocialCalendar, birthdays are a significant part but our users use it for many other social occasions such as anniversaries, Valentine’s day, birthdays of friends not on Facebook, trips etc. We also have public holidays for most countries.

The biggest advantage SocialCalendar brings to the table is the ability for a user to coordinate a get-together, movie, night-out etc. with friends and family because we enable collaboration around an occasion. For many families, it has replaced the kitchen calendar – they can put things on each other’s social calendar.

SocialCalendar has also built a sophisticated wish list functionality using Amazon and soon you will see some very cool functionality developed in partnership with some top players in this space. Constantly evolving, fortunately or unfortunately, is the only way to succeed as a startup in Silicon Valley.

By: mem

mem — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:36:42 +0000

Justin,

Love your blog man – but virtual gifts man?? Srsly?? In the middle of an economic crisis that was basically built on people spending on things they didnt need and couldn’t afford… and facebook is pushing virtual gifts??

I realize you’re not in the ‘social commentary’ business and to be perfectly clear, I have always enjoyed your even and thorough reporting – but today is not last year and virtual gifts are complete and total BULLSHIT – as perfect a virtual symbol as any to mark this dark hour – and so I must ask, if you don’t call this obvious spade a spade, who in this mess-of-a-world will??