FacebookBirthdays

Michael (Admin) | Nov 17, 2009 Utilities

User rating:

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

Loading ...

Here’s the good news on FacebookBirthdays: it does what it says it does by listing all of your Facebook friends by month and showing when their birthday is. I just installed this app yesterday so I can’t speak to how well the push feature works, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt in that area and assume it works.

Here’s the bad news on FacebookBirthdays: it doesn’t do anything else! There are several other apps that also display Facebook birthday info plus a little more, and I think that’s ok if this app would just be the best at it… but gosh darnit, it doesn’t even have an options panel, and the “Today & Upcoming” only shows birthdays from my Contacts instead of Facebook. I like that it shows birthdays from my Contacts, but that’s not the main purpose of this app.

If my name were Konstantinos and I had the ability to make this app way better than it currently is, here’s what I’d do…

Add the option to hide/unhide specific friends because, let’s face it, Facebook friends aren’t always actual friends
Add the option to sort by name or birthday… or maybe even network, or other criteria
Add the option to display Facebook friends only, Contacts only, or both in Today & Upcoming
Add the option to specify timeframe in Today & Upcoming, ie: today only, 7 days, 30 days, etc.
Add the option to turn Push reminders on/off
Add the option to set Push reminders for (x) days before birthdays
Add the option to send reminders via email in addition to (or instead of) Push
Add the option to hook into other social networks that also have an API like Facebook’s

Adding the option to send a greeting card is a whole ‘nother can of worms so I’m not listing that here.

FacebookBirthdays already shows profile pics which is something that not all of its competitors in this niche are doing, plus it has an in-app browser for viewing profiles and writing the requisite “happy bday” on someone’s wall. Konstantinos is off to a good start so far, but there’s so much more that could be done with this app!

Even though some other apps are throwing in birthdays as part of their Facebook Connect functionality, I think it might be worth paying for an app that does this one thing really, really well. This app is only on version 1.1 right now, so hopefully someday it’ll get built out into something better and more useful.

iTunes Link – FacebookBirthdays
Version 1.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2