it's a win win for Burger King as, after "constructive conversations" with facebook, the chain pulls its innovative and – it would seem all too – popular 'Whopper Sacrifice' facebook application.
the application rewarded users with a free Whopper for every 10 friends they deleted from facebook. the deleted friends, rather than realising three months down the line that they hadn't received a poke in a while, got a very explicit notice that they had been deleted in favour of a piece of meat.
all good fun, very innovative, and on-brand (demonstrating how much people love a Whopper) but with over 200,000 friends deleted, the social networking site felt obliged to step in, with a facebook spokesman commenting that:
users' expectations. After constructive conversations with Burger King and
the developer of the application, they have decided to conclude their
campaign rather than continue with the restrictions we placed on their
application." (source: AFP)
you have to sympathise with facebook. they're a social networking site after all, and BK's application was – literally – destroying their network and therefore fundamentally, their revenue base. but don't feel too bad for Burger King – the application did exactly what it was designed to do… get people talking about Whoppers; something that the application's demise will only do more of.
