Snapchat has Added a New Birthday Reminder Feature to Help with Engagement

With a new ‘Birthdays Mini' reminder tool, Snapchat has added a new option to remember friends' birthdays and share celebrations within the app. Snap's latest Mini – which is essentially micro-versions of entire applications embedded within Snapchat – provides an overview of friends' birthdays, as well as access to additional celebration features, such as AR Lenses, to help honor the event, as you can see below.

View a list of upcoming and current birthdays, as well as birthdays by Zodiac Sign. To honor their big day, wish your friends a happy birthday with unique stickers and fun Lenses! You can even count down the seconds until your own birthday!

Snap users seem to be big in astrology and Zodiac signs. Snapchat also released Astrological Profiles in November, which gives users information about their star sign and what it signifies for them and their relationships. It was reported at the time that research revealed that star signs were witnessing a comeback among younger audiences, with the pandemic piquing their interest since "people tend to resort to astrology in times of severe stress”. As a result, the inclusion of unique Zodiac information in the new Birthdays Mini makes sense, while the new AR capabilities and celebratory tools will pique attention and encourage more users to interact with the app around birthdays.

Which may present a greater opportunity than you believe. Users check-in to see if there are any upcoming birthdays and remain up to date on important news about family and friends within the app, which makes up a large percentage of Facebook's usage these days. If Snap can replace that function and capitalize on the interaction potential, more people may turn to Snap for the same purpose.

In a similar vein, Facebook's Memories and 'On This Day' prompts have gotten a lot of attention, with millions of Facebook members accessing their personal "On This Day" page every day. Indeed, Facebook announced in 2017 that over 155 million people have opted-in to receive notifications for the service. The addition of birthday reminders could coincide with Snapchat's goal of focusing more on tight connections and connecting with friends in the app and help to maximize its community-building efforts.

The Birthdays Mini will only show up for users who have chosen to have their birthdays accessible on Snapchat, and it will not show your or your friends' birth year or age. So, if you want to, you can stay youthful enough to be Snapchat-cool. In terms of size, it's a little change, but it might give Snap another boost in terms of usage and engagement.

Snap's Birthday Mini is available in all areas starting today and can be found by tapping the rocket icon in Chat or searching in the app.