Birthdays come once a year and we get heaps of wishes on Facebook. It may be your best friends, old school friends or even people you have met only once before. Your Friends might write on the wall or send a personal message. You will always feel really happy to see a lot of wishes, but down the line are all these wishes really important?
If it's your best friend, they will definitely use something more than just a Facebook wall post. Who knows, they might even throw a surprise party for you or at least give a phone call right at twelve midnight. What I am trying to say here is that, although you got a facebook wish it doesn't mean that they remembered your birthday! Seeing your name appear in the top right corner is just enough to make them wish you, and Facebook has made the process so simple where anyone can wish then and there without even visiting your wall.
Whatever it is, it's your social etiquette to thank them back. A normal person on Facebook may have 500 friends and it seems that at least 200 out of them, will wish you unless it's a national disaster.
I had my birthday last week and got around 250 birthday wishes and I wanted to thank all the well-wishers back. So I googled to find a solution. Here are my findings:
- Just Ignore,
- Put a blog post saying thank you,
- Put a common status thanking all,
- Thank each person with a comment,
- Be smart and use an automatic app to thank everyone!
Well, option 1 is not the best etiquette. Although you were just simply wished, the guy on the other end has put some sort of an effort to make your special day extra special. So I ruled out this option.
Option 2 may be ideal for someone popular and a good blogger. If you google you will definitely come across few of those wishes, but imagine 800 million people adding 800 million posts in a blog out there every year? Wow, Facebook is adding junk to the internet.
Putting a common status or even sharing a thank you card image is nice and simple. But that sounds like an easy way out, doesn't it?
Now you come to option 4. Commenting on each wall post, liking them and responding to any personal messages in the inbox. Oh, 250 friends into more than 1 minute each? That will be a boring and a time consuming task. How can you have so much of time to spend when we are so busy these days? Copying and pasting the same thank you message may help, but that too, takes a lot of time.
What I decided on was option 5. I found a third party Facebook app that suited my need called, 'Say Thankyou'. The only limitation was, they were only able to wish up to 500 friends at a time. But that was within my margin as I needed only 250. What I like best about this app is that you have many ways to thank all the wall post wishes. I think this app has the potential to revolutionize facebook user patterns.
You can comment on each of the posts, just like them or even do both. You can also put a thank you message on the friend's wall, just like we did in the good old days. And adding to it, you can select whom you want to thank and whom you don't want to thank.
All this took me less than a minute and a few mouse clicks and I was able 'Say Thankyou!' to all my 250 friends.
Well it makes life easy, but is it really socially acceptable? The debate is on. I feel that the app adds a little more robotization to already robotized lives of ours. It may lead to losing the interest in wishing Happy Birthday when you get to know that you are thanked back by a robot.
But for our busy lives and since we have a lot more interesting other things to do, apps like these may help in numerous ways!