birthday

A  birthday  is the date when someone is born; some IndieWeb sites display their owner’s birthday, or provide a special display or custom theme on the date and month of the birthday itself. Some silos’s user profiles have a birthday field that you can (or must) enter, and some prominently alert your friends on the month and day of your birthday, like Facebook’s "BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK" feature at the top of their events page.

Why
Sharing your birthday on your website lets you inform the web of when your birthday is. More people may say "happy birthday" to you. If someone forgets your birthday, they can refer to your website.

Security risk
Birthdays are often used as part of the security information on various sites, and thus revealing your birthday may place you at more risk of your account on such sites being compromised.

How
Ways to share your birthday on your site include:


 * Having a countdown to your birthday
 * Publishing your birthday on your About page
 * Sharing your birthday using a h-card
 * Posting an announcement on your birthday as a post

IndieWeb Examples

 * on http://acegiak.net/ using  in her h-card on her home page since (????-??-??)
 * publishes the month and day of his birthday using  on his home page h-card since 2016-02
 * since 2016-12-28, Aaron's home page will show balloons floating from the bottom when viewed on his birthday. (Copy this file if you want to use it on your site! https://aaronparecki.com/assets/birthday.js)
 * added some code to display a cake-emoji next to the profile picture on his main h-card, which also advertises his birthday in mf2, but only on the day itself.
 * displays his age and a countdown to his birthday on his website. The countdown, when parsed for microformats gives the time-of-birth as  exact to the minute.
 * has a temporary banner on his website counting down to his birthday.
 * publishes the month and day of his birthday in his representative h-card at https://jacky.wtf/about since 2022-02 as both  and
 * Since 2022-07-09, 's site will show a big native cake emoji over his photo on his representative h-card and wherever else his h-card photo appears, confetti will fall!
 * publishes the month and day of his birthday in his representative h-card at https://www.jvt.me and uses https://confetti.js.org/, as well as adding a link to Jamie's "Support Me" page
 * publishes the month and day of his birthday in his representative h-card at https://www.jvt.me and uses https://confetti.js.org/, as well as adding a link to Jamie's "Support Me" page

Facebook
Facebook has had a birthday field in user profiles since pretty close to the beginning, including separate privacy levels for the date (day & month) and year:



Twitter
Twitter as of 2015-07-06 has a birthday field in your profile visible just below your "joined" date:

https://g.twimg.com/blog/blog/image/Kevin_Hart_Bday_.png

with various privacy levels for the "Year":

https://g.twimg.com/blog/blog/image/b-day_settings.png

Year dropdown privacy menu options:
 * Public
 * My Followers
 * People I Follow
 * We follow each other
 * Only me

On your birthday, when people visit your profile page, balloons fly up from the bottom of the screen:



Sessions
IndieWebCamp sessions about birthdays:
 * 2016-03-14 IndieWebCamp MIT
 * 2016/MIT/birthday
 * 2016/MIT/birthday

Security
Birthdays are often used as part of a person's identity and thus publishing a precise accurate birthday pose an identity theft security risk. As a result, people at some IndieWebCamps have self-reported as using non-real birthdays on silos.

Criticism
Birthdays are often used by social networks to create spurious notifications - see Friendster's line in this video