Google’s Personalized Birthday Greeting

Birthday is a big deal for anyone and an event to watch for. Last July 2, I celebrated my 25th birthday. It was a normal work day for me then and just busy with my daily tasks. People at work greeted me and I received tons of wall post in my Facebook page. But what makes it special is when I noticed my Google search page. I was actually curious why there’s a  birthday cake vector image displayed in my screen. Then I decided to find out if someone famous is celebrating their birthday same as mine. To my surprise I saw a caption; ” Happy Birthday Yeh!”. First thing that came into my mind is that this is too awesome. Yes, I’m partly geeky so now you know why this got me excited.

I needed to know how Google find out that it was my birthday last July 2. Then I realized that the information came from my Google+ account. It’s super cool to see something as personalize as this from a big company. As a social media practitioner, I think this is one of their edge from Facebook. Although Google+ has a different market than Facebook but someday they might try to tap the same audience as FB has.

I think one of the advantage of being a well know search engine is that you have a wider opportunity to explore social media tactics. As most SEO and Social Media people know, Google+ had a big impact with link building for websites when it was launched. Geeky me asides, this is my way of saying thank you to Google for the birthday greeting. I personally think it’s really sweet, cool and awesome all round up in one. As a social media manager, I do have high hopes for Google+. It may not yet reach what Facebook reached but I think it’s still possible with proper consumer insight to back it up.

Now if you want to put up your own Google+ account, it is automatically activated together with your gmail account. Just look for the +(name) icon at the top toolbar of your account. Then once the new tab open, everything will be easy breezy from there. Looking forward to see you all join Google+ and hope you have fun with it as I did.

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.”     – Oprah Winfrey