Facebook is releasing a “Happy Birthday Cam,” which you’ll find on your friends’ profiles when you visit them on their birthdays. The cam allows you to record up to 15 seconds of video which can then be presented to friends with various birthday-themed overlays.
Facebook’s plan to turn the News Feed into a personalized video channel faces a roadblock in the form of “happy birthday” messages, which until today have almost entirely taken the ancient form of text. Lol! That begins to change today with the launch of birthday video cam, a feature inside the flagship app that lets you record 15-second videos for your friends.
Birthday video cam, which is iOS-only for now, appears on your friends’ profiles on their birthday. Tap it and you can record your message. If you like, you can swipe through a series of birthday-themed frames to really drive home the point before you post it on your friend’s timeline.
In any case, it will be a more special message than a simple “Happy birthday,” or “HBD!” typed onto their timeline. Facebook has been heavily investing in video in the past couple of years, and this feature is likely to be part of its hopes to get more people to post videos on Facebook.
The feature will be available first on iOS devices, with Android following in the next few months, per Facebook. Lot more features are pending for android users — Photo collage, Live Videos and Profile Videos. Hope to receive soon.