Facebook- gringos and ecuadorians

Today is one of my classmate's birthday, and after sending the (semi-obligatory) Facebook well wishes, I noticed the differences in sentiment sharing between my Facebook friends that speak English and Spanish. This is obviously a huge generalization, but I've noticed that my friends that speak Spanish tend to leave much more heartfelt messages via Facebook- and in general are more expressive. I'll be the first to admit that this applies to my cross-cultural relationship- Alvaro and I have a tradition of writing letters to each other when we have to separate that we're only allowed to read on the airplane/back home once we've separated and his are always much more eloquent, poetic, and well-articulated than mine. That being said, mine have definitely improved in that area since we first wrote letters about 3.5 years ago...

Here's a mini sampling of some of the comments that my Ecuadorian friend received for her birthday today (translations mine):

• happy birthday dear Monita!!! Have a beautiful day, may God bless you always and may you celebrate many more years....I'm sending you a big hug!!!
• Mona, happy birthday dear. May God bless you and gift you many more years of life. Enjoy this birthday that comes filled with love, happiness and magic. An enoooooooormous hug!!!!
• My dear Moni, I couldn't give you the corresponding hug today in class, but I want to wish you the best birthday and I hope that you enjoy it a lot with the people that most love you that are surely many...Enjoy this next year of life and I wish you many blessings, friend...I love you lots...HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
• Beautiful friend, Happy Birthday may God bless you very much and I hope that you enjoy to the maximum this day with all of your loved ones, may the saint live!!!!

Here are the birthday wishes for a friend who speaks English (so do his friends):

• AAAAAAAAAHHHHH. it's your birthday and that's cool, though i'd sure like if you were here to celebrate. i'll give you a piece of cake someday.
• Hey! Happy Birthday! Have a great day!
• happy birthday to u wish u al best .!
• Happy bday player, keep keeping it real
• WHAT!?!! It's your Birthday! Have a great beer! And have an extra one for me, because I'm not drinking right now! HappY Birthday DUDE!

Obviously I skewed the results by picking fairly exemplary postings to share, but I promise that most of them were along the same lines. My Ecuadorian friend has a few posts that say "feliz cumpleeeee" (happy birthdayyyyyy), and my North American friend has a few posts that are more heartfelt, so there are exceptions everywhere. But this trend seems have some level of significance. I'm not really sure what to think of this. It's not that gringos don't feel strong bonds of friendship, just that it's not as common to publically (or, I'd argue, even privately) express the importance of those friendships. Obviously, the religious factor plays into these comments- it's a verrrry rare moment that I see a gringo friend write "may God bless you" or "wishing you many blessings" on a friend's Facebook wall (this is definitely a result of my limited friends list- I obviously didn't go to a specifically religious school, and my friends represent that), while most Ecuadorians are Catholic, at least in the sense that these phrases are common.

I'm not really sure what else to make of this non-scientific exploration of Facebook trends, but it struck me as interesting.