Facebook just added another extremely useful feature for users, and in doing so took out a slew of applications that do that same thing. You can now get a weekly email telling you, simply, which friends have birthdays coming up.
That’s good news for all of us who want more birthday information. It’s bad news for Birthday Alert and its clones that already do that on Facebook. Birthday Alert has 180,820 active monthly users.
Lest you think this is just some random feature: Birthdays are big business. Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch started their social network Bebo with a simple birthday reminder service. That service had 100 million users at one point and still brings in $4 million per year in revenue from ecards and gift purchases. Bebo was funded in the early days from birthday reminder revenue.
The title of this post is meant to be a joke, but it definitely sucks to be one of the very many birthday reminder Facebook apps today. Such is life. With a flick of the keyboard Facebook can make your app redundant and pointless. Meanwhile, I happily turned on the new feature, and I can’t wait to be prompted to send people virtual birthday gifts for a small fee.
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Next headline: Facebook Status Updates destroys Twitter.
Not really. And if that was true, it would have already happened. This also shows that you don’t understand the potential of Twitter.
I actually stopped using Twitter because I can txt me updates to FB via my cell. With Twitter, I’d get the most pointless updates ever from my contacts. The only time it was useful was:
1) I met someone through it for a few dates.
2) Commentary during the VP debates several weeks back.
now that is a joke!
@Stephen: You should try using it for networking and staying up to date with all the news in your niche/branch.
I think that’s the future. All most popular facebook third party apps will become facebook standard app. too hard to resist the greed on it.
This is a very good reason why captive applications on Facebook may not be sustainable in the long run. Platforms like Facebook have far too large an incentive to back into successful business models once entrepreneurs have proven that they work. It would be like building a hotel on land you don’t own. What self-respecting entrepreneur would do that?
One primary advantage of Facebook is the convenience of single-sign-on within the closed network. However, we now see the true long-term cost of building on an enclosed network: you may have your economic means taken away from you while revenue sharing on advertising in the meantime.
So why would Facebook cannibalize an application built on its platform? Simple. The eonomic downturn means margin pressure. Facebook needs a scalable a business model. And quick. The scalable revenue and viral user base will likely come from Applications. The operating system itself is a means to an end.
It is time to move on from closed networks operated by Lords who can arbitrarily change the rules of engagement. I believe Federated Identity is the way forward. The missing ingredient has been a dependable framework. Fortunately, OpenID and Microformats have flaws but are maturing quickly.
Identity.net is one implementation of portable identity, built on OpenID, but extended to include a single sign-on network — http://identity.net/network/index.php — and a portable reputation based on iRank which is being applied across the network. API details are here: http://identity.net/profile/api/doc/index.php .
Well put. And it is a problem.
The only problem with it is that “Rob Monster” has a vested interest. Identity.net doesn’t seem to building an open system based on open source technology, but an open system based on closed source software. Looks like a freemium service to me. Still some lock-in there.
I think identity.net still things identity is entirely a technical problem (note their discussion of patented tech on their site). Good grief.
Facebook has had an iCal feed of birthdays available for quite some time that I combine with the birthday feed from my Apple Address Book so that my calendar shows everyone’s birthdays on it automatically.
and when you’re there, be creative: http://www.happybirthdaydomains.com
I’ve never used any Facebook birthday reminder apps, because Facebook has always been showing whose birthday it is in the next two days or so.
Arrington is so funny
I hope that was sarcasm.
I LOL’d.
You mean, you L’d OL.
the picture is so perfect.
that may be the case, but facebook has the world’s worst birthday calendar, changing its birthday alerts daily since apparently “today” is three days long and then it’s next friday. Until facebook fixes its calendar mechanism, I have a hard time seeing this feature being that successful since it will just cause a lot of embarassment if you send someone a present a week early.
Facebook needs to die. Those who rely on Facebook for revenue will find themselves in a Microsoft mess.
FACEBOOK to aspiring ENTREPRENEURS: “come use our platform and build your dreams” 2 years later “we love your dream, now it’s ours, go away”
MICROSOFT to FACEBOOK: “We love your platform, let us give you a bunch of money so you can make your dream come true” 2 years later “your dream almost came true but your broke, go away” Consolidation is a way to put it nicely.
lol very well put… it summed up the who idea of Facebook and their evil tactics in one paragraph…!
This is such a sad story. With the backing from MSFT, facebook is now looking to be the MSFT of social network. I really hope great community application developers realize that and start looking for other alternatives. Facebook -> unsocial network for developers.
If Facebook does indeed become the MSFT of social networks, I would highly advise anybody who wants to make money to flock to them.
Many of the big money makers on desktop OS’s build for Windows. Less so for Linux.
lol @ facebook pulling the plug on apps that complete with their new service
Shouldn’t confuse Facebook with Apple:P
Ironically enough, this was posted on my birthday
GAWD FOCKING DEEMIT! Facebooks sucks! SOCIAL NETWORK SUCKS! Why should we know who’s birthday coming up?>?!?>>?>!?>!>! WTF ZONG! It’s enough to make american highschool girl scream in jublilee. How is this ass, i mean, app useful? USE YOUR HEAD! god, this ass, i ,mean app is useless
^ No friends.
You mean captures, not destroys.
I’m anxiously awaiting your virtual gift to me next week.
I remember we wished you a happy birthday on a Squawlbox call a while back. Birthday reminders are a very cool web feature.
Ya mean it will remind me each and every time a friend of mine has a birthday even if they never registered on FB?
Now that Gents is truly amazing!
Michael - While Facebook already dominates the ‘birthday industry’ by default, those wanting to drop me a little HB last week …. flocked to FRIENDFEED. My advice to Zuckerberg : Sell (if you can ….)
With the new service, can I easily add my parents birthdays, and my nephew and niece birthday? and everyone else that I know that don’t use facebook? Until that’s in place I don’t see why this new feature would destroy the other services out there..
Here’s why: Because almost everyone is on Facebook.
Not exactly :))
birthday is definitely big business since every time you forget one, you get screamed at… so there is a pain… so there is a business…
All Facebook did here is add a radio button and a notificaion. It is fair to say that if your entire business model is vulnerable to FB adding a few lines of code, you’re walking on thin ice.
Meanwhile, FB has taken steps to support applications that require greater focus and effort than a notification system. Take what they’re doing in the music space for example.
GroupCard (our company) is in the thick of this. We derive a lot of activity from birthday alerts, and yet we are buiding a meaningful collaborative experience that goes way beyond just an alert system. I think this is one reason that we’re one of the lucky ones that recieved FBfunding.
Finally, as some folks here pointed out, FB probably won’t solve ALL the problems in birthday reminders. There will always remain an opportunity to specialize and plug gaps that facebook will undoubtedly leave in the native feature. (A la what superwall has done vs. the native facebook wall. ) BirthdayAlert - the standalone app in this article - is an awesome product and I doubt many users will drop it any time soon.
Hi John,
I should probably call you instead of responding on a TechCrunch board, but I think it’s more than just “a radio button and a notificaion.” The fact is, Facebook has hundreds or thousands of features they could be implementing. As you know, my app, BirthdayAlert, has been up for well over a year and has seen many competitors spring up. Combined, the birthday reminder apps have millions of monthly actives. Now that the value has been proven out for the birthday reminder service, it is easy for Facebook to prioritize this feature above the others. Even if the technology is easy, it is hard to believe they are not using the app community to prove value for features. If they believed this feature is valuable for their users independent of apps proving it out, why was it never implemented in the 5 years that Facebook has existed?
Jeff
Totally valid argument, Jeff. And, like i said, I think it will be a long time before creates a reminder that is better than Birthday Alert - which is a lot more than a radio button.
Your point is dead on - one could argue that a rational FB app developer should never invest too far ahead of the curve in proving a market… especially in a case where Facebook’s barrier is so low.
The question remains, would people have been better off if FB had released this feature natively from the getgo?
BirthdayAlert has been my guardian angel…. ok, slight overstatement, but i LOVE how it takes distributed data and organizes. heck, if it weren’t for BirthdayAlert, I’d forgotten that today is my nephew’s 2nd birthday… oh crap… i forgot to send the card in the snail mail!!!
The apps were a mechanism for Facebook to build out a quasi-operating system 100x faster than they could independently. The virality of the apps were invaluable in the race to create an installed base and tap into the network effects of the industry. Hopefully, FB won’t run roughshod over the dev community… encouraging them to create these apps, then rewriting the code at a later date… or heck, just copying the code… oh wait, this company was founded on the premise of stealing IP.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1357.....ag=cd.blog
The idea of wishing Happy Bday to friends was the idea that started the concept of my start-up. A unique way to send such a greeting to those in your inner circle…
I’ve had BD reminders set-up in yahoo calendar since longer then I care to remember…. yahoo have screwed a number of things-up in one of their “upgrades” ( calendar reminders stopped working & all my emails from the 90’s have disappeared & I have mail with a date stamp of 1972! )
So I moved to gmail calendar & have all my BD reminders there - with the addition of free SMS notification, it pretty much does it for me
Do we really need bling with porridge ?
The biggest issue here is that due to Facebook not having any real form of a business model, everytime they add a free new feature that previously had value, they strip the internet and related apps of a great deal of their market share and sustaining income. Best case scenario for just about all of us is for one of two things to happen: 1) Facebook is forced to begin charging for various levels of services, or 2) Facebook Dies.
Remember Napster? It was a painful thing as they set a bad precedent and had to go full pay in a market that no one was willing to pay for. Facebook could become sustainable, and charge for “premium” services, but will they do it? My thoughts are no.
Hey Zuckerberg, being in your mid 20’s and building something that generates all that traffic is cool, but its even cooler when you can generate a PROFIT and not have to layoff hundreds of PEOPLE when you don’t come up with a sustainable model in time.
All your birthday are belong to us
That was definitely the next step that Facebook had to do with the birthday reminders. To me that is probably the best attribute of Facebook. I never remember anyone’s bday and this helps enough to let me get out a quick call or txt to some acquaintance.
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
Just like Windows plunking in its own anti-virus and other apps. If Facebook has a big enough subscription base, when does it achieve the same status as the ubiquitous OS and have to play nice with application developers?
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.
Hi Michael, Josh from Facebook here. As you noted at the top of your article, we too think this feature is really good for users. Users care about their friends and their friends birthdays and don’t want to miss them. In fact, we think a feature like this is really good for developers too – as we noted in our blog post, there are a lot of apps providing really good experiences around sharing birthday wishes including creating interactive greeting cards and signing cards from a large group of friends – see Birthday Cards, Birthday Greeting Cards, and Birthday Calendar to name a few. As several folks have noted here, there are a lot of birthday applications that go well beyond the notifications we’ve just added, and if we can create more birthday activity overall and within those apps, we’ll see that as a success of this feature.
is this a generational thing? If someone paid (real) money to send me a virtual gift I would think they were lame or lazy or both. e-cards are fine but a virtual gift?
An e-card is a virtual gift.
Not all e-cards are a gift. Most suck. What you are doing with groupcards is a good start as long as the the cards themselves don’t , and these definitely do, suck. It is the creativity that moves people to send cards to someone. In this day and age to have up a static or semi animated card is something you should be embarrassed about, no matter what the technology.
Facebook uses developers to waste their time and money developing popular apps then cherry picks which feature to turn on. Facebook is evil
Speaking of birthdays,
check this one out.
http://apps.facebook.com/bdsinger
I don’t like reminders which send emails. I’m using ss birthday reminder which reminds me every time I start my PC and I have no chance to forget one of my birthdays. You can download it for free on http://www.ss-birthdayreminder.com