Aiming to give its Stories feature another push, social media giant Facebook has introduced ‘Birthday Stories,’ offering a way for friends, family and everyone in their community to add digital birthday cards, photos or videos to a story celebrating your big day.
Birthday Stories will sit on the top of the News Feed and will disappear after 24-hours. The new cards will be visible to all the friends via their Stories feed, though they can also opt out.
Over 500 million people use Facebook Stories every day. Just tap on the birthday notification, shoot or upload a photo or short video or use one of Facebook’s digital birthday cards, and you’ve instantly got a birthday wish. You can even add a music sticker to give your story a “Happy Birthday” soundtrack. Then, your wish gets added to your friend’s birthday story, creating a personalised slideshow for them.
Birthday Stories comes as a new step by Facebook to gain more users and to promote its popular Stories feature. While there are still many security issues, Facebook has always been more focused on birthdays than any other social media network. In 2011, the company allowed users to wish a happy birthday by typing a message on their Wall. In 2013, Facebook launched birthday notifications. A year later, Facebook transformed birthday messages into animated movies to make wishes more engaging.
As Facebook is trying hard to sustain young users on its platform, Facebook believes the new birthday card will bring people back onto the site at least once a year and it will remind people who they're connected to on the network. The new Birthday Stories could revive those long distance relationships.
