Facebook birthday wall posts: one year later

Friends,

You may remember my 3-part series last year on facebook birthday wall posts.  The topic continues to fascinate me, so I thought we could briefly revisit it now that I have more data (i.e. I've depressingly gained another year of age).

Last year the three posts examined when people posted on my wall, exactly who posted, and (most interestingly) what they posted.  This year, I've again tabulated the results, but we're going to focus only on the last category -- the content posted -- because, well, it's the most interesting.

What people posted
and how it compares to last year

If you don't have the time or inclination to visit the above link to "what people posted," I'll summarize to you my methodology.  I place all facebook birthday posts in one of three categories:

1. Standard
This is the worst type.  It containes only the phrase "happy birthday", with a few possible things tacked on at the end-- exclamation marks, "dude", "man", or in my case, "Jon."

2. Standard Plus
Don't let the name fool you into thinking this is a good option.  It's just the standard wall post above with an added platitude, e.g. "hope you have a great day!"

3. Personalized
These are really the only acceptable wall posts, in my opinion.  Whether you personalize the post with an inside joke, memory, poem, or a video of a smiling chimpanzee, these posts actually make the birthday person feel valued.  Now, for some reason last year I split this category up into two subcategories.  But you can mentally group together the green and purple in the graphs below.



2011 birthday wall posts by type



2012 (better) birthday wall posts by type


What we can learn
nothing important, I'm quite sure

The main takeaway here is that -- Yahtzee! -- my facebook wall was noticeably better this year!  Standard Plus stayed where it was, while 12% of my total wall posts shifted from Standard to Personalized!!  Way to go, internet social network.

Why did this change take place?  I have a few ideas.  A. My friends are cooler now than they were last year.  B. I unfriended the lamebrains who posted Standard birthday posts last year.  C. Last year I blogged extensively about birthday wall posting, and approximately 12% of the crappy birthday posters in my social network took it to heart.

But that's just speculation.  Some things we'll never know.

Interesting development(s)
My dream of this blog and the world becoming reflections of each other is finally coming to fruition

My blog was referenced, directly or indirectly, 6 times on my birthday facebook wall.  I'd like to acknowledge the contexts:

My friends bmcnees and Tim vied for supremacy on this blog's MVC page. (For the record, Tim currently sits at #1.)

My friend Beth worried she would be used on here as an example of a bad birthday poster.

My friend Rob randomly brought up last year's posts.

My friend kmech confessed the pressure she felt from last year's posts, then shared an awesomely touching message of missing me and our friendship!

My friend Kendra pulled off the near-impossible-- a Tangent Space(s) reference so amazingly obscure I had to go back and read last year's blog entry to make sure I was remembering it correctly.


We can pick up this conversation again in about a year.

Jon

Facebook birthday wall posts: part 3/3

[Part 1: At what time did people post happy birthday?]
[Part 2: Who posted happy birthday on my wall?]

And now, the epic conclusion to my facebook wall research.  I hope you've appreciated the unimportance of this exercise and sensed my overall mistrust of statistics and people's presentation of them.  And yet, it's so fun to make graphs and talk about numbers.  Seriously.

With that barrel of monkeys in mind, we move to the best facebook birthday topics I can give you -- questions about what people wrote on my wall to wish me well.


What did people post on my wall for my birthday?

It was much easier to create categories for this than for people's closeness to me (it just felt horribly wrong to toss around the idea of a "people I despise" category for my facebook "friends").  There were four natural categories that emerged (with a few sub-categories) as I looked at my birthday wall:

Standard  The very, very basics.  Ex.:

• Happy birthday!!
• Happy birthday man.

Standard plus  The above, plus an additional platitude.  Ex.:

• Happy birthday, Jon!  I hope you have an awesome day!
• Jon, it's your birthday!!  I hope it's a blast!

Entertaining  Anything bizarre, silly, or fun that isn't personalized.  Ex.:

• A video of a giraffe licking someone's face
• A philosophical rambling about the meaning of a facebook wall post

Personalized  An inside joke or recalling of a memory.  That's pretty self-explanatory, right?

So, obviously there is a demarcation between "standard plus" and "entertaining."  The first two categories (which we might call Level 1) require absolutely no thought or effort.  The latter two (we could of course call them Level 2, but I'm now tempted to go with Latter 2, because it occurred naturally in the sentence) require thought, effort, and/or some level of actual friendship.

In summary, then, insofar as facebook birthday wall posts can be said to have any quality or value whatsoever, Level 2 posts come across (at least to me) as much more thoughtful and meaningful than those in Level 1.  So, how did my recent birthday wall break down?

So, the sad reality of my social network, humanity, America, and Gen-X is that only 14% were willing to rise to Level 2 for my birthday.  Kudos to those people.

About half the posts (52%) put me to sleep instantly, while another third (34%) caught my eye for a brief moment before causing me to doze off.

Another interesting factor(!)

Surely, you might think, there are ways to show you're excited for someone's birthday on shis wall other than creativity or personalized messages.  No, you're mistaken.  But a popular attempt to do so is to throw in some number of exclamation marks.  I decided to monitor the concentration of this powerful punctuation on my birthday wall:



This chart shows the number of people (y-axis) who used the indicated number of exclamation marks (x-axis).



If the presence of exclamation marks can be trusted (it can't), at least 98 people were really excited for my birthday!!!  One person, as seen on the chart, was ecstatic enough to somehow use 13 exclamation marks in one birthday post.

In total, 190 of these bad boys were thrown down for my birthday, for an average of 1.57 exclamation marks per post on my wall that day.

(Un)important conclusions and questions for you

If we can learn anything from my study (we can't), let it be this-- if you're going to write on someone's wall for shis birthday, take the extra minute to give a Level 2 message.  If you can't reach L2 for that person, you probably have no business writing on shis wall.

Also, when it comes to exclamation marks, go big or go home.  With an average of over 1.5 marks per message, tacking on one obligatory "!" at the end just isn't going to convey any excitement.

• What is your practice when it comes to writing on people's walls for their birthday?

Jon

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