Social networking service Twitter now lets you share your birthday on your Twitter profile-but the question is, will you let them ? And taking into account Twitter’s latest ‘forced’ insertion of that ‘ad campaign’ button, your answer could be a big ‘NO’
Twitter wants you to celebrate your birthday on its social network, and it will even give you some animated balloons for your profile when you refresh your page on the special day of the year. The feature is merely borrowed from Facebook, which has been asking for user’s birthdays since they sign up, which has proved to be a major facilitator of targeted ads for the network.
Thankfully, the feature is optional and you can choose whether you want to avail it or not. Users can choose between sharing their birthday with the public, their followers, people they follow, people they follow who follow them back or “only me.” To add your birth date to your Twitter profile, choose the “Edit profile” option on Twitter.com. Your birthday will shown to those who can view your profile; you can also choose to enter the month, day and year of your birthday or any combination of that info.
Users’ birthdays will be displayed on the upper-left-hand side of their profile pages, under their profile photos and just beneath the line indicating when they joined Twitter.
However, this feature has a pitfall: it’s privacy dangers will probably outnumber the functionality it offers. It is, in fact, probably justa tool to help garner much-needed advertising revenues as has been stated officially as well: “customise Twitter experience and provide targeted ads.” Privacy expert Jeffrey Chester asserts Twitter users should think twice before adding birthdays to profiles.
The company has been in turmoil ever since it’s CEO Dick Costolo’s sudden exit. Post that, it has introduced a slew of initiatives to sound socially relevant. It now displays pages for product collections. It debuted an ad button a few days back.
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