Facebook Sacrifices Whopper Application

Facebook is a hugely popular social networking site.  You’ve probably heard of it.  And the big deal with Facebook lately is their developer network.  Companies and individuals alike can write the code for their own Facebook application.

There are applications that enhance the things you can do with videos you upload to your Facebook profile.  There are applications that help you share songs and music you like or dedicate a song to a Facebook friend.  The list goes on and on.

This has been going on for many months now, but no company had really taken advantage of the platform with a killer viral marketing gimmick… at least, that is, until Burger King came along.

Burger King released their own Facebook Application last week, called Whopper Sacrifice.  The application asks people to sacrifice 10 of their Facebook friends in exchange for a free Whopper.

In less than a week, the Application was being used by over 80,000 members who had collectively sacrificed over 233,000 of their Facebook Friends in pursuit of a free Whopper.

Then yesterday, Facebook killed the Whopper Sacrifice application.  Killed it dead.

Why?  I can only speculate… but I would venture to say it has something to do with Facebook not being familiar with the concept of marketing and free publicity.  I mean seriously… why would they kill this thing?  I can understand having a knee-jerk reaction to a piece of software that promises to disconnect your users from one another–particularly when the central concept of Facebook is connecting people.  But the end result of these sacrificed friends would have been minimal.  Most users would likely have gone back and added their friends again after the promotion ended.  And the free publicity for your application developer program would have been invaluable.

Sheesh.  It’s a head smacker.

On a side note, can we just admit that Burger King has some of the most uniquely creative marketing people working for them.  From the subservient chicken, to the flame-broiled cologne, and now this.  They are the undisputed leaders in viral marketing thinking.  I’m sure Burger King is not even terribly upset with Facebook about all this.  As much as they enjoyed their little application, I’m sure the publicity from this news story about it being killed will far outweigh the impact the campaign would have had if Facebook had left it alone.

Facebook, on the other hand, may have just scared off other major brands from getting creative with the application development program.  They are likely to fear the same kind of rebuke-from-on-high that Burger King’s got.

Just seems like a colossally stupid move by Facebook to kill the thing.

So what’s the lesson in all this?  Maybe it’s that even the best and most original marketing ideas might still meet resistence from backward-thinking people.  And if it does… it still might work out in your favor

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