Birthday wishes – reading between the lines.
It was my birthday recently and the number of ways I got birthday wishes really set me thinking…. Here goes…
- A few phone calls on my mobile phone that woke me up…
- Calls on my land line wishing me.
- Some friends who walked in to wish me.
- SMS wishes.
- Email – Office email & Personal email on Yahoo and Google.
- Instant Messaging – Yahoo messenger
and Gtalk messages chat messages wishing me.
- Twitter messages.
- Social networks – Facebook
and Orkut messages.
For want of a better term I call these ways of communication “channels”. That was 8 different channels or means that people used to communicate with me this birthday!
And guess what? – I got no Birthday cards or Electronic Birthday cards this year!
I suppose… The thought is more important than the deed!
It made me stop and think what all this meant. I tried to make sense of it all… And here’s what I concluded.
- “Impersonal” is now becoming “personal” – Wishing is becoming more and more impersonal… And so are many relationships and acquaintances. It is now normal to receive an offline IM birthday message. Communication is getting asynchronous
even when it could have be synchronous. An offline IM message, or SMS or facebook message instead of a call.
- The onus of picking the wishes is “yours” Annie Hall film – You don’t “pick”
your wishes you don’t get it. What this essentially means is you don’t
log on to Facebook for a week you get your wishes “late”. - It is getting tougher to acknowledge wishes – You need to reply and acknowledge wishes on all these many channels. Even if you find sending an SMS back boring. After all your acknowledgment mean a lot to the sender.
- More social channels => the more connected you are
– The more social channels you are on the more you might get wishes. I got wishes from people I would never have expected earlier.
- Channel usage patterns are changing – For many Twitter is almost email, thought it was never meant to be. The usage patterns between some channels are blurring.
- They still care for you no matter the channel – The important fact is people want to wish you and that is what matters. it doesn’t matter if its impersonal.
- You are really old fashioned if you expect Birthday cards!
No matter how much I adopt technology or geeky I get, the charm of being wished by some one in person or receiving a “real” greeting card is unmatched.
And of course as always, many others who simply forgot my birthday despite all these channels. 
Totally agree with your impersonal is personal bit. And yeah thru facebook orkut you get wished by the most distant person, it feels great to see they actually come out of the way to wish you. But no I don’t think you are old fashioned if you expect a real card. I guess it depends upon how close you are to the person. Your spouse / partner am sure would rather buy you a card than a twitter wish.
I often wish people on twitter to remind friends from common circle that it’s one of our’s birthday today. Like on your birthday i wished and then Hari and 2s wished you
Another thing is people just dont use govt postal services any more. They’d buy a card and hand deliver it.
Sanjukta
26 Apr 08 at 10:40 pm
[...] Ponder Point wrote an interesting post today on "Birthday wishes" – reading between the lines.Here’s a quick excerptAn offline IM message, or SMS or facebook message instead of a call….Social networks – Facebook and Orkut messages….What this essentially means is you don’t log on to Facebook for a week you get your wishes “l… [...]
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27 Apr 08 at 12:10 am