Category Archives: Story

Did you miss a birthday this week?

Facebook’s birthday reminders are making it very easy for everyone who’s using that service not to miss a birthday and send wishes to our friends every day. Not to mention the thousands of apps that helps people create and schedule their greetings such as ours.

However, it still occasionally happens that we miss birthdays, even when the information is on Facebook. It happened to me too many times, and I always felt terrible about it.

This week was my birthday, and I’ve been on the other end of the “missed your birthday” problem.

Many of my friends send me their wishes – of course some of them did so using our Birthday Application. Special Kudos for you guys! – and of course It felt great to have so many amazing people around me thinking of me for my special day.

But some friends didn’t. They simply missed it. And for the ones who realized, I can tell they were really embarrassed (at least they faked it well ), just as I’ve been several times when I missed the birthday of someone I really should have remembered.

The good news is that it’s not such a big issue when handled properly. With a nice “Happy Belated Birthday” card for example.

And now we got you covered: Happy Birthdays was updated so you can easily see the recent birthday celebrations, and send cute, funny belated birthday cards.

Here’s how it works:

1 – Happy Birthdays will show you birthdays that happened for the past 7 days

2 - Browse the list to check the recent birthday celebrations

3 – Click on a friend on the list if you have missed a birthday and send a belated birthday card from our templates. As usual, you can also design your own.

That’s it … diplomatic incident hopefully avoided

Enjoy your birthdays!

He Remembers Me!

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Very few things can make a startup founder melt like a marshmallow.

Almost every single day in our life is a lonely fight for relevance, existence and traction. In a sea of sharks, of risks, of dismissals, of incomprehensions, and of doubts.

Having a thick skin, and an uncluttered mind, free from raw emotions and from the tempting lures of being complacent or appear vulnerable is not just a “nice to have”. It’s a mandatory skill to develop if we want to survive.

However, I challenge any founder not to melt after hearing a story from one of their users, whose life has been touched because of what they’ve built.

This is one of these.

It all started with “Edu”. I met him only recently, but I quickly grew a lot of respect and affection for him. It’s easy to see why: Edu is also an entrepreneur, but with a much higher profile. He’s compassionate and smart: he advises startups, and sometimes even invest in them. He loves people, and people love him.

But Edu doesn’t always have the time to show his compassion to the people in his life. He’s a very busy man.

When he was a kid, Edu was in a private catholic school run by nuns. One of the nuns, who was also one of the most respected and devoted person in the school, also really loved Edu and was always looking after him.

They ultimately stayed in touch and they connected on Facebook. But they haven’t been interacting a lot thus far.

I connected with Edu through a friend in common that introduced the two of us, as he believed we could do some business together.

That’s how I got to show him to our birthday application: Happy Birthdays.

Edu, liked it a lot. I immediately saw that we were on the same page. He understood what makes the app unique: the ability to collect and share gift ideas for people, in an easy, crowd-sourced, fun and non-intrusive fashion.

But, as it’s often the case with things we expect, or take for granted, a much simpler and much more ordinary action in the app was what touched Edu’s life.

Happy Birthdays allows users to create personalized birthday cards for select friends on Facebook. Very quickly, and very easily, while allowing the user to stay creative. Edu created and scheduled birthday cards for his friends, including for the nun, with whom he is connected on Facebook.

When we met again, a couple days ago, to catch up over a coffee, he told me about what had happened when she received his greetings: she was so moved by this simple but meaningful sign that she downloaded his message, printed it and sent it to her friends, and to Edu’s friends. Along with these touching, simple words: “He remembers me!”.

Edu eyes were sparkling as he was telling me the story. It was easy to see that he was really happy for putting so much warmth into the life of someone that matters for him.

That’s of course one the most beautiful story I’ve heard this year. And yes, it did make me melt.

Thank you Edu for sharing this story with me, and for inspiring me to stay focus and keep the faith in our vision and in what we are building.

Tales of an Empathic Civilization

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3d small people - help to the friend People are sometimes asking me why I’m working so hard on Symbyoz.

That’s because I believe in Empathy. That’s because I’m deeply pained to see it taking a conspicuous beating on a daily basis.

Empathy is understanding each other’s feelings, goals and aspirations. It’s not the caricature of a cheesy feel for anything that’s cute or weak. It’s cultivating the curiosity to know what move others, what is it that they feel, what is it that they want.

I stumbled upon this fascinating video about “outrospection”.

Don’t run away just yet or let not the nerdy word fool you … The tale, really, is simply about empathy.

Empathy is pausing to listen to others, instead of endlessly thinking and talking about ourselves and about our problems, instead of being obsessively self-reflective, instead of assuming things based on a way too common self-centered perspective.

Empathy helps to consciously decide whether we can do something with other people or whether we should ignore them.

One of my favorite author, Paulo Coelho, also perfectly captures that essence in his latest blog entry that’s really worth reading for a major boost in inspiration:

2013: the first year of the rest of my life

Some excerpts:

I will pass a beggar, who will ask me for money.
I might give it to him or I might walk past thinking that he will only spend it on drink, and as I do, I will hear his insults and know that it is simply his way of communicating with me.

I will pass someone trying to destroy a bridge.
I might try to stop him or I might realize that he is doing it because he has no one waiting for him on the other side and this is his way of trying to fend off his own loneliness.

Empathy is about looking forward, not going backwards. It’s about sharing our future, as a response to our shared present and to our shared past.

How to create and send thoughtful holiday greetings (Part 2)

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In Part 1, we’ve learned how to create a simple, thoughtful, personalized holiday greeting image for everyone, using our Happy Birthday app.

In Part 2, I’ll show how our Social Assistant app helps you to make a big impact with less effort by making it a lot easier to create individual greeting images for your important friends.

How it works

We said it in Part 1: one great way to create a thoughtful greeting message is to personalize it and, of course, make it look beautiful.

When it’s for a group of people, a greeting image can be personalized with content only related to you. But when it’s for a specific person, it’s of course best to personalize it with content related to both you and the person you’re sending your greetings to.

If you are looking to send a group card to all your friends at once, this tutorial is not for you, and you might be looking for Part 1. If you are a Photoshop pro, and it’s a piece of cake for you to create beautiful cards for several friends, or if you are using a specialized service to send customized cards to a list of contacts, this is not for you either.

But If you are looking for a simple way to send an individual greeting messages to a select list of important friends, you may be concerned about spending a lot of time and effort creating a personalized card for each and every friend on your list that you want to make a big impact on.

Rejoice! as you can do that easily this year using our Social Assistant application.

All it takes is only a few steps and a few clicks.

Step 1: Log In to Social Assistant

If you’ve already added your list of important friends there, you’re good to go.

Otherwise, you’ll need to add friends. That’s done by simply clicking on the “Add a friend” button on the tool bar menu and following the next step.

Step 2: Add your important friends

Click on “select” to select friends from your Facebook account.

If you want to add friends that are not connected to Facebook, or if you do not want link your Facebook account to Symbyoz, you can also simply type their name and an email address.

Note that you will not to be able to post the greeting on Facebook for friends that are not connected to a Facebook account.

When you are done selecting/typing the friend name and email address, simply click “Add”.

Step 3: Open the greeting card creation canvas

There is a “Catch-Up” button next to the line with your friend. Simply click on that button, then click on “Create greetings card”.

Step 4: Tweak your personalized card collage

Tweak the collage the way you like it …

Same drill as in Part 1: you can change the background, move or rotate the text and the images, add the logo of your company, the pictures of your cat, your favorite quote … OR … you can save time, do absolutely nothing and go with the default arrangement we created for you.

Step 5: Select your delivery Channel and Send

Select the delivery channel and simply send your message.

Congratulation, you’re done, only 19 more friends to do …

Step 4: Rinse and repeat

Simply do it again for all your important friends in your list.

It may take more time than sending a collective message to a group in one single shot, but the reward of having every single of your important friends receiving a beautiful, personalized and specific greeting just for them is huge, and we’re making it a lot easier than it could have been … for free! :-)

Seize that opportunity to make a big impact in your loved ones lives.

Happy Holidays!

How to create and send thoughtful holiday greetings (Part 1)

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Tweak the collage... ‘Tis the season to be thinking about sending wishes and cheers to your loved ones.

Very few things says “I care about you” better than a thoughtful, cheerful holiday greeting.

This year, Symbyoz is making it easy for you to create greetings that you can send to your friends, family and peers.

How it works

One great way to create a thoughtful greeting message is to personalize it and, of course, to make it look beautiful.

If you are a photoshop pro, and have time on your hands, you don’t need any of the following.

But if you are short on time and don’t want to use heavy, complex software to simply create a greeting, you can do that using our “Happy Birthday” application to create a collage image for a personalized but collective greeting card, or you can use our “Social Assistant” application to create a similar image, but for a specific, individual friend.

All it takes is only a few steps and a few clicks.

In this Part 1, we’ll explain how to create the personalized collective greeting card using ”Happy Birthday“. We’ll update this with a link to Part 2 where we explain how to create a personalized individual greeting card using ”Social Assistant“.

Step 1: Log In to Happy Birthdays & open the collage composer

Step 2: Customize your collage

Tweak the collage the way you like it

You can change the background, move or rotate the text and the images, add the logo of your company, the pictures of your cat, your favorite quote … OR … you can save time, do absolutely nothing and go with the default arrangement we created for you.

Step 3: Save

Once you’re satisfied, simply save & post.

We strongly recommend to download the result on your computer and/or post it on your Facebook wall to share with all your friends.

Step 4: Enjoy and be merry

There’s plenty of things you can do with your collage image, such as sending it directly by email to select friends for an even more personal touch, or post on your company wall, or pin it on Pinterest, or do whatever you want to do with it. It’s yours.

Happy Holidays!

Facebook Nation — Privacy loses to indifference

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Deutsche WelleFacebook nation — privacy loses to indifferenceWashington Post (blog)Facebook Nation is the group of people who say they will move to Canada after the election but never do. We complain and complain and complain, but we never leave.

This story is one of the most hilarious (and accurate) one I’ve read about Facebook lately. Some of the money quotes:

“Quit Facebook? But where would I go to complain to my friends about what Facebook has just done to its privacy settings? Twitter?”

“You can’t even be brought to click a simple button to vote on the issue! You’ve taken more complicated steps to access pornography! But this button? Nope. Too far.”

The truth is that Facebook culture is indeed that of hyper slacktivism and other passive/pleasurable activities. Inspiring people to take action and do something meaningful is incredibly hard. At Symbyoz we’ve got the scar tissues to prove it.

But Facebook is not a small startup anymore. They are uniquely positioned to influence the way people behave, and with these powers comes the responsibility to act like the adult/parent they should be, guiding and protecting the bratty children we can’t help but still love because we’ve been there.

In a way, that’s exactly what they started doing by removing the children the right to vote. That was exactly the right thing to do IMHO.

As Robert Scoble would say: “This is a freaking company, not a communist experiment”.

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Facebook-Induced Depression: Comparing ‘Friends’

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There is an interesting story on the state of things in Facebook that I strongly recommend. For the full story, Read more here from Madeline Grimes/Salon.

Personally, I’m less depressed than overwhelmed by the quantity of content I still have to consume on the social network.

But the story does ring true. Here’s a short video from The Young Turks along with snippets that summarizes it.

This is a story about a woman named Paula.

[...]

Paula and I were never friends, even though we went to middle school together.

[...]

After we connected on Facebook, I began watching her life; I began creating some version of her that seemed just as real to me as that plump girl with greasy bangs. And as Paula’s life fell apart, I couldn’t stop watching.

[...]

I became a cobbler of her life, stitching together an imagined tapestry from her poorly typed messages and grainy photos. She was married with three children. Her husband wasn’t around; he was in jail for a crime only committed by fools. She was on welfare, food stamps and subsidized housing.

[...]

The dark side of me – the side I share only with those who have pledged their unconditional love – thought she was too stupid to notice that her life looked like a condemned building and that the wrecking ball was coming swinging.

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About Those Facebook Evil Plans To Ruin Your Business …

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Is Facebook intentionally hurting small businesses?

More voices are ganging up around this meme, due to the recent strategic decisions that are changing the ubiquitous, ultra popular social platform in ways that few really understand, but most already feel.

In a recent blog post the good folks at Dangerous Minds are asking their ”Friends Back”, and are hoping to unleash a protest campaign to force the hand of the internet giant to revise their strategy.

Dangerous Minds Want Their Friends Back …

Although the obvious should be pointed out, which is that Dangerous Minds subscribers are technically not “friends”, but (at the very best) “fans”, the article has very interesting comments and explanation about the legitimate concerns many fan page admins and small business are having.

You should definitely take a look at it.

I personally have mixed feelings on that one. For sure, we (Facebook developers and advertisers) have been impacted by the recent strategic choices coming from Facebook these days, and it actually goes way beyond just limiting posts seen by fans and/or charging fan page administrators to reach an audience they’ve spent a lot of time, effort and very often money building. But I ultimately believe that they’re doing the right thing, for their business, and for their users. And therefore I don’t buy – yet? – into the argument that this is going to be their downfall.

Let me explain…

Facebook is also changing their APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in a way that will make more difficult for developers like me to get as much “viral” juice and traction from people using their applications.

For example: it was previously allowed to use the Facebook’s Graph API to publish stories on your friend wall. This is what we are using to post toughtful “Happy Birthday” messages on a friend’s wall when a user wants to send or schedule a birthday greeting. It’s still possible to do it now, but that will change soon. It’ll not be allowed to post on a friends wall using the API anymore … at least it won’t be easy. There is a convoluted way to do it that has been proposed, but at first glance, it will introduce so much friction for our users that I strongly suspect that it’ll make things harder for them, and that of means less engagement and less growth for our app. I suspect that the next move for Facebook will be then to say: “yeah, we know it’s not ideal … pay us and you’ll have access to the API to post directly on the friend wall”.

However, as I said, It makes perfect business sense for Facebook to do this. First of all, let’s be clear: they didn’t build the service to help advertisers and companies like me to make money. They built Facebook to solve the problem of people willing to be more connected with others (I’m intentionally leaving out the “open” part of then “open and connected” that their PR is eagerly spinning about). So, going the route they seem to have taken recently not only will help them to make more money, but it’s also a lot more aligned with their original mission because people don’t actually really want to “connect” with smaller brands, they want to connect with their friends first, then with bigger, well established brands for coupons or promotions.

I believe their thinking is this: “We’ve grown as a company, and we’re public now. The hell with the ‘small’ players. Whoever wants to make money on our platform has to be a big cat and has to pay us”.

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that smaller brands/companies that have something even extremely meaningful to give to people won’t stand a chance in the long run, or at least it’ll be a heck of a lot more difficult for them to shine. Yet again, that’s the nature of business … nobody said it’s going to be easy.

I understand and empathize with modest shops like Dangerous Minds who are trying to be vocal about this issue to make Facebook flinch – hey, we’re even smaller, and probably will never be able to even try promoting only one post daily anytime soon.

I’m just very skeptical that it’ll work: real users are trying to solve basic emotional and relational problems on Facebook. Power users, like us or Dangerous Minds, are trying to solve business problems. There’s a clear conflict of interest, and frankly I don’t think that Facebook gives a damn about the latter camp at this point, and neither should they: the latter camp seems not to care too much about Facebook’s bottom line and real value for real users either.

Why we say “Happy Birthday”

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We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.

~ Orson Welles

Being alone is not being lonely. And in fact, if you ask, most people would rather say they want others to “leave them alone” as opposed to having them in their face most of the time. Most people are private and shy, and introvert, and exclusive.

But most people don’t want to be lonely. They dread of not being able to draw on someone else’s energy, of not being loved, of ending their lives in a solitary bed.

Birthdays are usually moments when this internal conflict culminates. In recent memories, none of my friends told me that their birthday was a pure moment of joy and satisfaction. More often than not, it’s always the same story: they will say they don’t want to do something special on that day because it’s depressing. But they’ll be delighted if someone else organizes something for them, or depressed if nothing magically happens.

We say “Happy Birthday” because we’re an empathetic species. Because we care about others even when we want them to leave us alone. Because we intuitively know it’ll impact others as it impacts us.

Birthdays are a very big deal.

We all have a birthday. That’s maybe the only single thing we all share as human beings no matter our race, gender, nationality, religion, height and whatnot (OK, maybe our obsession for cats online comes close ).

So, whether we love it, fear it, resent it, loathe it, or dread it, it always means something when someone tell us “Happy Birthday”.

Photo credits to makeuseof.com – http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/friends-birthday-facebook/

We thought the birthday experience on places like Facebook deserved more, and that’s why we built our birthday application for Facebook. We hope people will find it to be a smart and useful alternative to make that ritual as easy as it should be, but also as meaningful and thoughtful as it ought to be more.

How Perfectionism Hurts Relationships

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In these days and age of compulsive obsession with self image and success, many of us are lured by the pursuit of perfection rather than by the pursuit of happiness.

But strong perfectionist traits usually prevent healthy relationship formation.

It matters to be aware of our imperfections, but it also matters to accept them.

Here’s a short takeout from the article that inspired this post (you should read the whole thing, it’s long, but it’s pretty damn good):

Perfectionists spend most of their time dreading the next potential failure
Perfectionists are often hypersensitive to perceived rejection or possible evidence of failure
Partners of perfectionists often comment on their partner’s emotional unavailability
Perfectionists can be fiercely competitive, even with their partners

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