Time to update my 3 year-old tradition of documenting how I’m wished happy birthday by medium. Here’s 2009 & 2008. Some thoughts: Some friends sent along well-wishes via more than one medium. I double-counted them. I thought about only counting the first, or counting each one as a half, but figured that this exercise isn’t intended to gauge my own popularity so much as the popularity of each medium. Similarly, I thought about plotting it on a 100% axis, but liked that the absolute axis made two points: Facebook appears to be stealing “share” from email, but not other mediums. There seems to be a static amount of kindness generated by the combination of email, Facebook, and in-person greetings, and the other platforms are additive. This year was the first year that IM and Tumblr appeared on the list. IM may have been bigger in the past, but I was never signed on. Now I’m attached to IM almost all day long. Tumblr just recently turned on a “replies” feature sort of like comments, and my cousin-in-law, Sarah, took quick advantage. I wish there were an easy way to control for things like day-of-the-week and social media connections. I’ve got way more Facebook and Twitter friends now than in 2008, but I don’t have a great record of the historical counts. Oh well. The whole thing is also a fun reminder of how lucky I am to have such great friends/family.

Time to update my 3 year-old tradition of documenting how I’m wished happy birthday by medium.

Here’s 2009 & 2008.

Some thoughts:

  • Some friends sent along well-wishes via more than one medium. I double-counted them. I thought about only counting the first, or counting each one as a half, but figured that this exercise isn’t intended to gauge my own popularity so much as the popularity of each medium.
  • Similarly, I thought about plotting it on a 100% axis, but liked that the absolute axis made two points:
    1. Facebook appears to be stealing “share” from email, but not other mediums.
    2. There seems to be a static amount of kindness generated by the combination of email, Facebook, and in-person greetings, and the other platforms are additive.
  • This year was the first year that IM and Tumblr appeared on the list. IM may have been bigger in the past, but I was never signed on. Now I’m attached to IM almost all day long. Tumblr just recently turned on a “replies” feature sort of like comments, and my cousin-in-law, Sarah, took quick advantage.
  • I wish there were an easy way to control for things like day-of-the-week and social media connections. I’ve got way more Facebook and Twitter friends now than in 2008, but I don’t have a great record of the historical counts. Oh well.

The whole thing is also a fun reminder of how lucky I am to have such great friends/family.

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  1. robgo said: Happy Birthday!
  2. alexbain posted this

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