Facebook is practically king at reminding you when your friends are celebrating their birthdays, pushing you to say hi and wish them well. Today, the company will now encourage you to leave a video — with the ‘Birthday Video Cam.’
When you access your Facebook via mobile (iOS only, unfortunately) and click to write a nice message to the birthday boy or girl, the platform will give a call-to-action pop-up asking you to record a 15-second video instead with your front-facing camera. Once completed, you can adorn the video with a number of Birthday-related frames to make it extra jazzy.
This is an expansion of a feature we spotted earlier in October of last year — but it seems this is the formal roll-out for all users.
Lately, the platform has been providing plenty of tools to develop video, including new analytics tools for brands and expanding its use of 360 video. Sending someone a little piece of media to wish them Happy Birthday seems small, but it’s likely that it’s a crucial part in Facebook’s big plan to normalize video on the site and make it a little more about face-to-face interaction.
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