BK's Antisocial 'Whopper Sacrifice' Lands in the Dumpster

SOCIAL NOTWORKING site Facebook has decided to pull the plug on the Whopper Sacrifice application.

More than 230,000 Facebook members got a rude awakening this past week when they were notified that they had been "de-friended" for a nice, juicy Burger King Whopper.

Facebook users who installed the "Whopper Sacrifice" application were rewarded with a coupon for a free Whopper if they de-friended 10 people from their "friends list," a directory of contacts with whom Facebook members can e-mail, chat and play online games.

Facebook members that were de-friended received a message that informed them, "You've been sacrificed!" The tag line for the Whopper Sacrifice application is, "You like your friends, but you love the Whopper."

The application is the brainchild of Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a marketing and public relations firm that has a reputation for pushing the edge in the social media sector.

The Whopper Sacrifice is inherently antisocial because it is based on excluding others in order to win a prize, said Carl Howe, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

"We shouldn't be surprised that Facebook wasn't a big fan," he told the E-Commerce Times.

However, Facebook didn't terminate the application. It modified it so that users weren't notified when they were de-friended. In the end, it was Burger King that ended the application.

Source: www.ecommercetimes.com, Jan 09