Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Facebook Sounds Death Knell for Birthday Notification Apps

by Terrence O'Brien on November 18, 2008 at 10:01 AM


Well, with one fell swoop Facebook may have put a whole class of applications out to pasture. A new feature rolled out by the social networking service sends you a weekly notice of your friends' upcoming birthdays, which makes popular applications like Birthday Calendar and Birthday Alert redundant.

The birthday alert business is big money. Social networking service Beebo (owned by our parent company AOL) was founded as a birthday notification service that boasted 100 million users before expanding with more Facebook style features.

While the more popular birthday apps that offer features such as e-cards and e-gifts (those $1 trinkets that people "send" each other on Facebook) might not disappear into the ether over night, many of the smaller ones will quickly fade now that Facebook has replicated their usefulness. [From: TechCrunch]

Tags: birthdays, facebook, facebook apps, FacebookApps, notification, party, partying, social networking, SocialNetworking, web

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular