Yesterday my facebook wall was full of birthday wishes, both from people I haven't seen in years (and to be honest probably won't see in years) and from my closest friends. I loved it :)
They way I see it you can look at this scenario from two perspectives;
1. It's facebook..your birthday shows up in the right corner on the home page of all of your 500 "friends".
90 % av the people that wrote on your wall would never have remembered your birthday. (In fact probably 99 %..let's face it, most of us suck at remembering dates, no matter how important they may be)
Soo..since they only remember because the are logged on to facebook it doesnt really mean anything, since it's just a "facebook thing".
2. Yes, the date does show on all of your 500 "friends" home page. But not all 500 notice it, some people just don't pay attention to birthdays. So out of 500 maybe 300 notice that it's your birthday..out of those quite a few will go "ah well..its always someones birthday". So maybe 150 actually take the 60 seconds it takes (if that) to post a little birthday message on your page. Some do it because you are close friends (they are also expected to send a text..) but some do it because they noticed that it's your birthday, they haven't seen you in a while (maybe never will again) but think you are a nice person and therefor want to give you that one-line-60-second attention.
Me personally, I used to be the number 1....maybe I'm getting old and sentimental but I reckon option 2 is pretty cool :) Everyone that posted on my wall made the choice to do so, and for that I'm grateful. If you put a smile on someone elses face it doesn't matter how big of an effort it was..the effort was made.
