I'm stealing a page out of Alex Bain's bag of blog tricks. Every year Alex posts a graph on on how many times and through which medium he was wished Happy Birthday (note: Alex's chart is way better than mine). This is really dorky, but it's always one of my favorite posts of the year because it tells me a lot about communication trends. Anyhow, here is my graph.
Note, there was a little double counting as friends wished me happy birthday multiple ways. Also, I didn't count things like seeing my dad and brother's family in person on my birthday.
One thing that jumped out at me was the difference between Facebook (76 times) & Twitter (1). I didn't even include Twitter on the chart because I was limited to six columns and only 1 person (@LatteKelli) used it. Twitter's poor showing is probably because Twitter has no birthday reminder service. Seems like that would be really easy for Twitter to do and it would drastically up engagement.
Second, texting is far more popular than calling. I probably influenced that through years of trying to minimize phone conversations with friends. What can I say, I'm not crazy about talking on the phone. :)
Third, three people actually sent me cards in the mail! Of course, all three of those people work at Tiny Prints, a wonderful card company. The cards were all hilarious in their own way and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Thanks Ashish, Richard & Ed! (Note: I'm not including cards attached to presents in this)
My favorite part of the chart is the 10 people that wished me Happy Birthday on the Ben's Friends Patient Support Networks. It's wonderful that these relatively new friends took the time. Furthermore, it gave me the idea of developing a "Happy Birthday from Ben's Friends" service/message for the Members of the Network.
Anyhoo, I had a great birthday and it was wonderful to get so many Happy Birthdays. I'll redo this analysis next year and we'll see what has changed.
