Sacrificing friends for burgers…
To the US, where there is news around advertising on Facebook. Burger King cleverly realised that many of us have far too many ‘friends’ on Facebook and last week they devised a promotional application to cull a few of them off. People had to remove 10 Facebook friends to receive a voucher for a free Whopper.
Although the application proved incredibly popular – a total of 233,906 people found themselves defriended – Facebook requested that BK removed the ‘You’ve been sacrificed for a free whopper’ notification; normally if you deselect a friend no notification goes out and Facebook felt that BK was contravening its anti-privacy laws.
However, rather than change the app BK decided to pull the entire thing, arguing that the notifaction was integral to the app. Now the website reads ‘Whopper Sacrifice Has Been Sacrificed.”
Personally I think that BK was totally right in pulling the app once it had been compromised. The app was a great way of tapping into the Facebook trend for making friends out of non-friends, and yet it really needed that viral notification to make it work.
]]>