Facebook adds birthday cam. No need to bother with cards - CNET

Facebook is making it easier to say "Happy Birthday" to the special people in your life.

The world's biggest social network has introduced a "birthday video cam" function that lets you record a video message -- maybe you'll sing that famous song? -- and post it to the timeline of a friend or family member. Facebook says you can complete the process in about as much time as it takes to blow out the candles on birthday cake.

"We wanted to find a new way for close friends to post something fun and quickly as possible," said Henry Soong, a creative tools product manager at Facebook. The feature is currently available on iOS and will be released on Android soon, he said.

There's no mystery as to why Menlo Park, Califoia-based Facebook is introducing the new function. Birthdays are among the most popular reasons its 1.6 billion users post messages on the network. In fact, more than 100 million birthday greetings were sent in January alone, up 60% from two years ago.

Birthday celebrations have been part of Facebook's efforts to rope in more users since the early days of the social network.