CNET: Instagram users must disclose their birthday to the company going forward. “If you haven’t already informed it of your birthday, Instagram will start to ask you for that information when you open the app. You’ll receive a handful of reminder notifications, according to Instagram, but if you haven’t provided your birthday by a certain point, you won’t be able to use the app.”
New York Times: Obama Significantly Scales Back 60th Birthday Party as Virus Cases Rebound. “The party plans had been months in the making and many invitees had already arrived on Martha’s Vineyard when former President Barack Obama belatedly announced he was canceling his huge 60th birthday bash scheduled for Saturday.”
Science Alert: What Did Hubble Capture on Your Birthday? New NASA Tool Lets You Find Out. “Every hour, seven days a week, 365 days a year, Hubble is busy doing something. Which means the telescope’s back catalogue would have something cool for every day of the year. For Hubble’s 30th anniversary, NASA has created a fun feature. On the space telescope’s website, there’s now a function that allows you to type in the day and month of your birth, and see what Hubble captured on one of your past birthdays.”
TechCrunch: Creative ways to host a virtual birthday party for kids. “Social distancing requirements amid the COVID-19 pandemic may have canceled kids’ birthday parties, but parents are finding new ways to take the celebrations online. While video chat apps like Zoom, Google Hangouts or FaceTime are an option for gathering kids together in the virtual space, there’s still the challenge of what to do once there. A few companies are working to solve this challenge for parents who are looking for ideas to make their child’s birthday special in the time of COVID-19.”
Slate: I Charted My Facebook Birthday Wall Posts Since 2005. “By one measure, I peaked in 2010, the year I turned 23. That was the birthday when the most people ever, before or since—53 of them—posted on my Facebook wall to celebrate another year of my life on Earth. It’s a good thing I don’t judge my self-worth against how many Facebook wall posts I get every time I turn a year older, or else I’d be in trouble, because on my most recent birthday, about a month ago, I got a measly 13 Facebook birthday well-wishes.”
Tubefilter: Facebook’s Birthday Fundraisers Have Raised $300 Million In The Past Year. “Facebook has many functions—you can use it for everything from sharing photos of a recent trip to influencing political campaigns. But lots of people simply check into the social platform to wish their friends and acquaintances a happy birthday, and because of that, Facebook users have raised $300 million in the last year for various causes.”
CNET: Google marks 19th birthday with 19 doodle surprises. “What good is a birthday without fun and games? That is apparently the thinking of Google, which on Wednesday celebrates its 19th birthday in a numeric symmetry. Google has culled together some of the search giant’s most memorable interactive doodles from the past 19 years and presented them to you in a carnival prize wheel.”
TechCrunch: 45 million people send birthday wishes on Facebook each day. “Roughly 1 in 30 Facebook users tells someone Happy Birthday each day, showing Facebook’s first major emergent behavior is still going strong. Now Facebook is equipping the 45 million people sending birthday wishes each day with some new features.”
Nieman Lab: The Atlantic brings readers into its archives with timelines based on their birthdays. “The Atlantic is 160 years old this year, which has gotten it thinking about ways it can tap its archives. On Monday it launched ‘The Atlantic Life Timeline,’ a feature that lets readers see their lives in the context of events the magazine has covered.” Looks cool both for history and genealogy.
Facebook is now offering birthday videos (and wow, TechCrunch, what a grim headline!) “Twitter shows some balloons and Snapchat wraps your messages like presents, but Facebook is where people celebrate birthdays online. Now to reinforce itself as the home for your personal content and connections, Facebook is launching birthday recap videos that assemble the best wall posts you got for your birthday into a cute little clip.”
Simple but clever: you can sync your Facebook friends’ birthdays with your Google Calendar.
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