Facebook birthday wall posts: part 1/3

[Part 2: Who posted happy birthday on my wall?]
[Part 3: What did people write on my wall for my birthday?]

A real blogger recently reminded me (more on that in a future post) that when people decide to read a blog entry, they're not necessarily willing to give it 3 hours of their lives.  And so, O reader, I will try to make these musings short enough for one sitting.

So when a topic comes along about which I have a lot to say, I'll break it up into multiple entries.  And if facebook birthday wall posts isn't one of those topics, what is?!


Where we're going on this two-part tangent

Everyone who has bought into facebook (i.e. has a bunch of friends and stays pretty active with posts, comments, messages, etc.) gets bombarded on shis birthday with wall posts.  It's just the way of the world.

But have you ever really thought about what kind of bombardment your wall is enduring?  I had a birthday recently, and I decided the 121 birthday-related wall posts I got would be a large enough sample size to figure out exactly what happens to someone's wall on that special day.  And, in fact, I think it will do more than that -- it might tell me something about my own social network.

The questions I wanted to answer all fall into roughly 3 categories:

1. When did people post on my wall?
2. Who posted on my wall?
3. How/what did people post on my wall?

These questions will be the three parts of this Tangent Series.  I think the second and third are much more compelling, but I arbitrarily typed the three in the above order, and so we start with the questions of timing.  Would the biggest rush be right at midnight, or the 8am-ish start of most people's day?  Would the fact that my birthday was on a Friday eliminate most or all evening wall posts?


When did people post "Happy Birthday" on my wall?

The graph shows the concentration of birthday wall posts in hourly slots.  The hour listed on the x-axis is the beginning of that slot, so, for instance, "10am" means the hour from 10am to 11am.

There's nothing earth-shattering there, but I think it describes facebook usage trends.  A decent number of people are on facebook after midnight, and some of them like to jump on the instant birthday post train.

It's no surprise there's a lull in activity during sleep hours, and then BAM-- from 7am to 11am is the peak of wall post activity.  My best guess is that most people who write birthday wall posts (I'm notoriously not one of them) tend to do so the first time they log onto facebook in a given day.  A natural time to log onto facebook for the first time in a given day is 8 or 9am.

The only other thing I have to say is that, despite my birthday's Friday orientation, there were in fact some evening posts.  But notice the awesome "social life lull" from 8-10pm.  I guess 10pm is the time when people get back from whatever they're doing and hop onto facebook.

I know facebook is how I spend my Friday nights.

Next time: Who writes on one's wall? Friends, enemies, people whose names you don't even recognize?

For now, just let me know what you think of the graph, if you have any thoughts or observations.  Also, share what your facebook life is like -- when and how often do YOU log on?

Jon