Facebook recently resurfaced upcoming birthdays on the home page’s right sidebar, after hiding them behind a “see more” button for the last month. Users now see a list of names of friends with upcoming birthdays with no dates or line breaks, as well as a link to their full-screen birthday list.

Prior to a month ago, the upcoming birthdays of friends had been visible on the every user’s Facebook home page since the early iterations of the site. Last month, though, Facebook rearranged the right sidebar, moving events and birthdays to the top. Users with multiple upcoming events or invitations suddenly had to click a “see more” button in order to view upcoming birthdays.

While this is a seemingly minor change, the extra step made it much easier to forget to write on a close friend’s wall on their birthday, one of Facebook’s most ingrained user behaviors.

This action had in fact become part of the social contract of using Facebook — a responsibility to one’s best friends. Facebook’s tinkering with this institution could have had repercussions on the social lives of users who had to explain why they had failed to send birthday greetings. The new display format for birthdays should reduce the possibility of this kind of faux pas.

Users, of course, have many options for finding out about upcoming birthdays. They can select to receive a weekly reminder email through Account Settings -> Notifications, or use one of many third-party reminder or auto-message applications. However, Facebook’s native birthday page does not provide a way to see past birthdays. For those seeking damage control for this last month of missed birthday wall posts, we recommend Mixin’s fdCal (formerly  fbCal) which provides a variety of calendar syncing options for events and birthdays. Sync your birthdays to a calendar of your choice, see which friends you’ve neglected, and build those relationships.