Facebook reduces 'Happy Birthday' to a mindless button press

Facebook has allowed you to forget when most birthdays are, and it has reduced birthday wishes from phone calls and cards to posts on timelines. Now it has taken that distant and simplified well wishing to an even lower level, reducing it to — if the well-wisher wants — a single button press. That single button press will result in the most generic birthday wish one could give: a stock "Happy Birthday!" post and nothing more. It will take hardly two seconds of your time; you'll probably forget you did it moments after pressing send.

For a while now, Facebook has been rolling out push notifications that remind users when a friend has a birthday that is approaching or that has arrived. If you prefer getting notifications through text messages rather than push notifications, however, you'll get your birthday notifications through a text.

When that text shows up, you will be given two options: you can reply with a custom message that you want posted on that person's timeline, or you can reply with simply the number "1" to have a generic "Happy Birthday!" messaged posted.

Most users, upon realizing this, don't view it as a positive thing. Facebook has managed to cheapen an already generic message by reducing it to a single button push, and as such "Happy Birthday!" messages on the social network aren't quite the same — when you see one, you might wonder if that person simply pushed "1".

SOURCE: The Next Web