It turns out Mother’s Day isn’t just the busiest day of the year for brunch reservations – it produces more Facebook posts in a 24-hour period than any other day as well.
In fact, last year Canadians alone produced nearly six million Mother’s Day posts on the platform, making it the single most discussed daily topic on Facebook in 2016.
They’re in good company – around the world, users produced more than 105 million posts about Mother’s Day on May 8, 2016, with the holiday achieving its widest popularity among users in the U.S., Brazil, and Philippines, in addition to Canada.
Photo and video posts went up significantly on last year on Mother’s Day too, Facebook noted, with more than 850 million photos and videos shared last year internationally.
Meanwhile, on Facebook’s mobile instant messaging platform, Messenger, Canadian users sent 30 per cent more GIFs and 60 per cent more videos on Mother’s Day compared to the day before (globally, both numbers were 100 per cent – making Mother’s Day Messenger’s sixth-highest day for video messages in 2016).
To celebrate Mother’s Day this year, Facebook has revealed that some users will be invited in their news feeds to share a card with mom (assuming they’re among the 27 per cent of Canadians whose mothers are on their Facebook friends list to begin with), with mobile users prompted to personalize their card by adding a photo.
Users can also choose from a selection of cards here.
The company also added a selection of custom frames, masks and other camera effects to Messenger (below), and once again is temporarily adding “thankful” to its selection of emotional reactions.
“In a world that keeps changing, some traditions stay the same,” Facebook representatives wrote in a May 10 press release sent to ITBusiness.ca. “We hope everyone will join in celebrating everything that mothers do for us on this special day.”