Birthdays are a great way to see how much you're connected to your friends. Today is mine and I'm taking the chance. I'm currently running a small social media experiment on facebook. I know from some friends that people believe it's your birthday if facebook tells them. I remember them putting a wrong birthday on purpose on their pages to fool the others. And it works. But let's see how far you can go with it.

What always bothered me is that most of the people simply put a "happy birthday" on the walls. I didn't want to have this. So I chose to make it as simple as possible for others to share their wishes with me without them having to be creative. I closed my wall for messages and I've just updated my status to:

It's allowing my friends on facebook to be part of my birthday with a minimal effort. One click! From other online campaigns I learnt that such a 1-Click-Committment is the most you can get out of people anyway.

The experiment will be running now for the next 24 hours. And I know that there are some risks. (I haven't done a swot analysis, though.)

Positive effects may include:

• Getting a lot of birthday wishes more than I would do normally without my friends having to care.
• If I get many "likes" it'll appear prominently on other's facebook streams.
• In the end I could easily send a thank you, to all at once :) (In recent years I took the time to thank each an everyone on their walls.)

Negative effects may include:

• People feel bewildered, might not be ready for such a thing.
• People might not want to be just a "like" among others.
• Since I closed the wall for today, their action may only involve sending me a real message or comment on the status. By doing the latter they would of course annoy everyone else who just "like" me having birthday. Also if one person starts commenting others might follow and then we're screwed. ;)

All the other effects I will experience over the day. And I'm excited .. hey, it's my birthday after all. :-)