I’m lucky enough to have a lot of kind friends who sent me well wishes yesterday on my 30th b-day. Last year, I found it interesting to note how people said “happy birthday” to me. This year, I figured it’d be interesting to do the same expercise, then compare it to last year. I should be able to keep this up for many birthdays to come, and it will be neat to see how technology impacts this graph over time. A few easily gleamed findings: Twitter showed up on the list this year, where last year, the technology was still so new that it didn’t occur to any friends to use it as a medium. As a big Twitter fan, I particularly enjoyed those greetings (thanks, @ScottOrn, @JPDownsTex, @Deena_Malkina, & @Sheffi). Facebook dominates the list. The site makes it easy to see which of your friends are celebrating a birthday, and for as long as Facebook is culturally relevant (which I expect will be a good chunk of my lifetime, in some form or another), I’m sure it’ll have a big presence in this graph. Email shrunk quite a bit, and I’m thrilled about that. I treasured reading well worded epistles from the several friends who reached out to me via email yesterday, but if this is an indication that email in general is loosing juice, than I think that’s a good thing, for the sake of everyone’s productivity. This data population is certainly tainted by where I happen to be on the day of my b-day, but I enjoy the exercise of looking for trends and thinking about what this’ll look like in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond.

I’m lucky enough to have a lot of kind friends who sent me well wishes yesterday on my 30th b-day. Last year, I found it interesting to note how people said “happy birthday” to me.

This year, I figured it’d be interesting to do the same expercise, then compare it to last year. I should be able to keep this up for many birthdays to come, and it will be neat to see how technology impacts this graph over time.

A few easily gleamed findings:

  • Twitter showed up on the list this year, where last year, the technology was still so new that it didn’t occur to any friends to use it as a medium. As a big Twitter fan, I particularly enjoyed those greetings (thanks, @ScottOrn, @JPDownsTex, @Deena_Malkina, & @Sheffi).
  • Facebook dominates the list. The site makes it easy to see which of your friends are celebrating a birthday, and for as long as Facebook is culturally relevant (which I expect will be a good chunk of my lifetime, in some form or another), I’m sure it’ll have a big presence in this graph.
  • Email shrunk quite a bit, and I’m thrilled about that. I treasured reading well worded epistles from the several friends who reached out to me via email yesterday, but if this is an indication that email in general is loosing juice, than I think that’s a good thing, for the sake of everyone’s productivity.

This data population is certainly tainted by where I happen to be on the day of my b-day, but I enjoy the exercise of looking for trends and thinking about what this’ll look like in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond.

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