Birthdays are special and honestly, it’s hard to think of something awesome to give a friend oro loved one on this special day.  Birthday cards are so ancient, though they are still sweet.  But at this day and age, people want more than just a card.

Skype’s betting that you’ll start sending greetings with its platform using Say it with Skype – a new feature that gives birthday a rockin’ twist.  Say it with Skype works like this: Skype has bands or groups from different genres like alternative rock, punk rock, pop, ballad, indie rock and more, which you can use to create a personalized birthday greeting to anyone you want.  It’s a group video birthday greeting.

“Give someone a little extra birthday joy. Create an amazing group video greeting with the new Say it with Skype app. You choose the friend and the band — we’ll set the stage for something wonderful.” – Skype

To get started, you just enter the name of the person you want to greet, your name, then the band you want. There’s an option to sing along with the band, then you can choose to add a note and to finalize your rockin’ birthday greeting.  You just need to choose how you will send your personalized greeting: either through Facebook, Twitter, or copying the URL provided and posting it on your web page or your friend’s web page.

Bands available are Ash, Body Language, Bowling for Soup, Charlie Simpson, Imogen Heap, CSS, Kill the Young, The Parlotones, and Scarlet Grey.

It seems Skype is learning a few things from its partnership with Facebook–birthdays are a really good excuse to reconnect with friends and send a special message.  Skype’s been layering in plenty of specialized features lately, adding a number of vertical opportunities for marketing, distribution and extended access to users.

One of Skype’s biggest updates in recent months was the direct video calling feature for Facebook.  This marked a significant expansion of Skype’s social strategy, and further solidified the integration between these two platforms.  Competition amongst messaging services is only intensifying, as Google, AOL and Yahoo have ramped up efforts around their respective platforms as well.  Skype will have to stay ahead of the curve if it hopes to avoid another setback in the social-mobile arena.