It’s almost impossible to forget about a friend or family member’s birthday thanks to the endless amounts of notifications that we receive on a daily basis from our social media channels, whether it’s a block of “Happy Birthday!” posts in our Facebook timelines, or the notification telling you to send well wishes to your friend.
Snapchat has jumped on the birthday bandwagon with their new “Birthday Party” feature, a set of two lenses, one for your own cake day and one that’s designed exclusively for snapping friends on their birthday. The new feature provides an incentive for users who never provided their birthdays during sign-up to fork over their information, because who doesn’t love adding more lenses to their already robust collection? Users that opt in to the service will also get a cake emoji next to their names on their birthday as a reminder to all their friends to send them a special message. Additionally, the updated time filter will allow users to tap from the current time to the day’s date.
It is important to note that Snapchat will only let you change your birthday a limited number of times, probably to eliminate the abuse of the birthday-exclusive features and to ensure that the data that they receive from all users is accurate for advertising purposes. As Snapchat matures into a better advertising tool, it needs better ways to target specific user demographics. This feature will allow marketers to better understand Snapchat’s audience for future campaigns (TechCrunch, IBT).
See our instructions below to learn how to activate the “Birthday Party” features in your Snapchat settings:
1. Tap the Snapchat ghost at the top of the camera screen.
2. Tap the settings button (the cog symbol) on the profile screen.
3. Tap “Birthday” under the “My Account” section.
4. Update your birthday and select “Okay” to confirm.
5. Celebrate your special day with your new birthday Lenses!
