Facebook “helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”
But as anyone that has used the service knows, sometimes those connections can become, well, tenuous.
Enter Burger King, who last week saw this as not a problem, but an opportunity to help Facebook users cull the unworthy using an un-friend app at WhopperSacrifice.com.
Leading with the headline “You like your friends, but you love the Whopper,” for every 10 friends you dump, Burger King provides a coupon for one of their signature burgers.
The application went viral, and in one week, 82,000 people deleted over 230,000 friendships on Facebook.
Vince Veneziani of GearFuse had this to say about the app on his blog:
It really wasn’t tough finding ten people on Facebook that I wanted to delete. I just needed a reason and a juicy burger was sufficient enough. This is one of the most twisted, yet delicious, marketing ploys I’ve ever encountered.
Yesterday, Facebook shut the application down citing privacy concerns. According to Inside Facebook, it was because the site “sent a notification to the friend being removed letting them know they were being “sacrificed for a Whopper” before finalizing the removal.”
Here’s Veneziani’s notification page after un-friending 10 of his unfortunate contacts:
Facebook claims the application still exists and will be enabled when the privacy issues are addressed, but clearly, Whopper Sacrifice won’t be nearly as controversial or interesting with the notification disabled.
What do you think?
Do you love or hate the BK app?
In trying to get attention and go viral, did Burger King go too far with the Whopper Sacrifice application, or did Facebook go too far in the name of privacy?
Comment below to share and/or friend me Facebook.
