Birthday greetings in Facebook have become a rather tedious affair. The social network informs users if any of their friends are celebrating their birthday, which often leads to a flood of messages on the celebrator's wall.
Most of the messages are the simple "happy birthday!", though there could be a few who will put more effort into the message by attaching a picture and a slightly longer message.
To push for more intimacy and personal touches on birthday greetings on the social network, Facebook has released the Birthday Cam. The feature, which is currently only for the iOS version of the Facebook app, will allow users to send videos to greet celebrants.
Users celebrating their birthday will have a banner displayed for recording a birthday video once another user taps their timeline to post a greeting or accesses their profile. Tapping on the banner will allow the user to record a video message of up to 15 seconds long, and before posting the video on the celebrant's wall, users can add special frames if they want.
With or without the special frames, and even if it only contains the same simple "happy birthday!" message, video greetings are definitely more personal than posts on a celebrant's wall.
"Facebook can help connect you to friends both near and far when it's their birthday, and receiving Facebook well-wishes from friends on your own birthday can make your celebration that much more special," said a spokesperson for Facebook.
The feature will be launched for iOS on Feb. 29, which means leap year babies will be the first ones to receive Birthday Cam greetings on Facebook. Android users will have to wait for the feature to arrive though, as while Facebook indicated that it will also be coming to Google's mobile operating system, but there is no definite date yet aside from that it will be pushed out in the coming months.
Android users, meanwhile, can enjoy the multiple account feature for Facebook's Messenger app, which is a new feature that is currently only for Android devices. The feature will make it easier for users sharing one Android device to switch between accounts on Messenger.
