Happy Birthday To Me. Thanks 30 Boxes

God bless Tiny Tim, Facebook and 30 Boxes and automated messages - and my friends. I turn 58 today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. But what actually is both genuinely touching and interesting is that I'm getting a huge number of birthday messages from friends and user groups/communities/forums. The latter come in as "Happy Birthday from (user group name), (user ID)" which can move me to tears. I mean who didn't want a birthday message from NYFan.com? Actually, Borders sent me a message with a 25% book discount just for little old me. But the ones that particularly are something are my friends including some who I know well and who I never met personally, who are sending me birthday greetings this year in unprecedented numbers (I have over 35 already via email and its only 8:00am on the day....). I have to think that this is because of 30 Boxes and other like applications which capture birth dates from social network profiles and then send opted-in reminders to those who care to remember birthdays. I'm genuinely thankful for all the birthday greetings. I'm happy that people who I know care enough to send them to me. For that I thank everyone of you who cared enough to send one. What also interests me is that the influence of social networks and the availability of information from public profiles has proliferated to the point where 40 birthday messages is not particularly odd or unusual - more anecdotal evidence on the There are some interesting lessons for companies that might be interested in dealing with their customers.

1. Small personal gestures go a long way to the creation of advocates a.k.a. friends for life
2. Social networks have an enormous amount of power because they can agglomerate (one of my favorite, "use it on your birthday because you'll be forgiven that day" words) large amounts of personal information that enhance the overall experience when organized and used right - far better than a soulless algorithm (though we need those too) for customer intelligence and segmenting. Hence the future of folksonomies and social tagging
3. This information is available publicly and without the overt (but with the implied) permission of the provider. The privacy issues a la Beacon are potentially scary but keep in mind, as a customer/consumer/humankind member, you've given your implied permission for non-commercial use - most likely. Implied version of the Creative Commons license...just kidding, no such thing. Psych
4. The anecdotal evidence is getting overwhelming for the willing participation of professionals and friends in social networks.

So what does this mean? Only a bit at the moment, but it has huge implications for the tidal wave ahead. What is potentially disruptive is what's implied in how my birthday information was "acquired." My profile, my implied consent, my friends and algorithms that don't know me from Adam using my profile to find out something that when acted on appropriately has an emotional impact, all in all as part of a MAINSTREAM way of communicating. MAINSTREAM. MAINSTREAM. The stream that eventually creates the tidal wave and the change in the organization of culture as the media for knowledge gathering and means of communicating that knowledge changes. Okay, all. I'm done. Watch for my forecasts for 2008 very soon. I have a lot coming actually. Probably in three pieces. Looking at what the experts are saying and my take on it. Then a look back at how I did last year. Then my guesses for this year. Now to my birthday and my wife.