Facebook Adds Anniversaries to Profiles (And Annual Reminders Too)
Facebook has just launched an enhancement to the “relationship status” field on user profiles for anniversaries. Now, when users list themselves as in a relationship, engaged, or married, they’ll get the chance to enter their anniversary date as well. Those who choose to do so can show their anniversary on their profile for friends, everyone, or a custom group of friends (depending on their privacy settings) to see. Here’s how it looks:
In addition, Facebook is adding annual anniversary reminders to the “Events” section of the home page – but just for your OWN anniversary. While this will be helpful for not forgetting that special day for yourself, Facebook isn’t adding your friends’ anniversaries to this section yet (though Facebook says it will do so in the future).
Overall, it’s a nice addition by Facebook that should be valuable for users who want to share this information with friends. Facebook has become a very popular way to wish friends happy birthday, and there’s no reason the same shouldn’t be true for anniversaries as well.
Anniversaries could also offer Facebook another way to add incremental virtual goods revenues. Over the last year, Facebook has been building out its Gift Shop, and over recent months has been increasingly promoting virtual gifts on friends’ profile pages on their birthdays (including scheduled birthday gifts). It could easily do the same for anniversaries.
While buying a virtual rose may not earn you too many points with your significant other, virtual gifts could be a nice additional way for friends to celebrate with couples on their anniversary.
To dig deeper into the virtual goods market, check out our new report: Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010.
