Tweet! Happy Birthday.

April 21, 2008

With notes coming in from Twitter and FaceBook and MySpace and every forum in the world (poker, geocaching, people-who-love-peeps, men-who-color-their-hair, camera, biking, etc.), it seems that electronic communication has trumped the telephone and paper-card method of wishing someone happy birthday.

I’m pausing here because this is a great idea for a magazine column and I don’t think I want to publish it here first and lose the ability to sell first serial rights.

Suffice it to say that I have already received 10 times as many birthday wishes via the Internet than I have by phone message or mail. Granted, today’s a mail holiday and I’ve been away so early cards are just sitting at the post office with my accumulated postal detritus.

But the paradigm is now to jet off a tweet or an electronic card instead of putting pen to paper and crafting a heartfelt note.

Luckily the action of writing a birthday check hasn’t been replaced. Those who are technically adept can just send cash via paypal. Oh, that paypal address is jeff@jeffcutler.com if you feel so moved to do so after reading this post. $5 or $10 is fine. I know gas prices are high and times are tough.

So look for a more coherent and fleshed out version of this thought/column/discussion in The New Yorker or similar pub.

More to come…