Dive Brief:

• Twitter is asking its users for their birthday information in exchange for a cascade of floating balloons on the desktop version of the platform on their special day.
• The move is designed to bolster Twitter’s demographic data on its users, which would in turn offer advertisers more targeting options.
• Twitter has long lagged behind Facebook in terms of demographic details on its user base.

Dive Insight:

If you are willing to provide Twitter with your birthday and share it on your profile, you’ll get virtual balloons floating through your desktop experience on that day. Twitter is taking a somewhat fun approach in order to begin rectifying an area where it lags Facebook – demographic data on users that allow advertisers more targeting options. Where Facebook has long held a wealth of demographic information about users to go along with all the behavior signals it tracks, Twitter’s demographic user database has been notoriously thin.

The feature is being touted as a fun benefit for users and the Twitter blog post on the feature doesn’t mention ad targeting, but the social media platform is being a bit more transparent on the support page under, “How does Twitter use my birthday,” with this explanation: “If you choose to add your birthday to your profile, it will be displayed to the audience that you’ve chosen. It will also be used to customize your Twitter experience. For example, we will use your birthday to show you more relevant content, including ads.”