Facebook launched a new Birthday Stories feature that lets users create and share multimedia birthday greetings for friends and family — complete with a selection of famous b-day songs to pick from.
The social giant’s Birthday Stories lets users add birthday cards, photos, videos, and songs via a “music sticker” to a story. Facebook has for years alerted users on the day of their contacts’ birthdays and prompted them to leave a birthday wish. Now, the world’s largest social network is rolling out an even bigger way to celebrate.
Songs available in Facebook’s Birthday Stories include “Birthday” by The Beatles; “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder; “Birthday” by Selena Gomez; “In Da Club” by 50 Cent; “Birthday” by Twista; “It’s My Birthday” by will.i.am; and “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen” by Neil Sedaka.
In addition, Facebook lined up several artists to record exclusive new renditions of the “Happy Birthday” song, including Lukas Graham, Jovanie, Lauv Raiche, SYML, Greyson Chance, Harper Starling and Neda Yasee for the new feature.
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The addition of birthday songs come after Facebook last fall launched a way to add songs to News Feed posts and Facebook Stories. The company has licensing deals with music companies including Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Merlin, Kobalt, Global Music Rights and several European performing rights organizations.
To add a birthday song to a Facebook Story, after capturing a photo or video, users can tap on the stickers tray and select the “Music” sticker. Searching on “birthday” will return a list of available songs; once selected, a sticker with the artist and song name will appear on the video.
In the first quarter of 2019, according to Facebook, it had more than 500 million daily active users for Facebook and Messenger Stories. The company two years ago launched Facebook Stories, which lets users share photos and videos that are available for a 24-hour period — a feature pioneered by Snapchat. Instagram had already copied the “stories” format from Snapchat.