birthday

From IndieWeb

A birthday is the date when someone is born; some IndieWeb sites display their owner’s birthday, or provide a special display or custom theme on the date and month of the birthday itself. Some silos’s user profiles have a birthday field that you can (or must) enter, and some prominently alert your friends on the month and day of your birthday, like Facebook’s "BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK" feature at the top of their events page.

Why

Sharing your birthday on your website lets you inform the web of when your birthday is. More people may say "happy birthday" to you. If someone forgets your birthday, they can refer to your website.

Why not

Security risk

Birthdays are often used as part of the security information on various sites, and thus revealing your birthday may place you at more risk of your account on such sites being compromised.

How

Ways to share your birthday on your site include:

  • Having a countdown to your birthday
  • Publishing your birthday on your About page
  • Sharing your birthday using a h-card
  • Posting an announcement on your birthday as a post

IndieWeb Examples

Silo Examples

Facebook

Facebook has had a birthday field in user profiles since pretty close to the beginning, including separate privacy levels for the date (day & month) and year:

Twitter

Twitter as of 2015-07-06 has a birthday field in your profile visible just below your "joined" date:

Kevin_Hart_Bday_.png

with various privacy levels for the "Year":

b-day_settings.png

Year dropdown privacy menu options:

  • Public
  • My Followers
  • People I Follow
  • We follow each other
  • Only me

On your birthday, when people visit your profile page, balloons fly up from the bottom of the screen:

Sessions

IndieWebCamp sessions about birthdays:

Issues

Security

Birthdays are often used as part of a person's identity and thus publishing a precise accurate birthday pose an identity theft security risk. As a result, people at some IndieWebCamps have self-reported as using non-real birthdays on silos.

Criticism

Birthdays are often used by social networks to create spurious notifications - see Friendster's line in this video

See Also