The King of Facebook
When two old acquaintances and Facebook friends sacrificed me for a lousy Whopper, I knew Burger King was onto something big… and that my feelings were just a little bit hurt. Burger King had created a successful Facebook application called the Whopper Sacrifice, which rewarded people with a free Whopper for sacrificing 10 friends. A brilliant concept that I wish I’d thought of. It’s so great because it has everything a successful Facebook app needs. It has an incentive, it has a viral component, and it’s useful.
There’s currently an oversaturation of Facebook applications out there. Many companies see that Facebook is the new thing but they haven’t figured out how to use it yet. A lot of companies force applications or features, regardless of whether people want them or not. Part of the success of the Burger King application is that it came out of necessity to let people do some spring-cleaning to their buddy lists. Using caution to not make the application seem mean spirited, it was given a lighthearted spin with the message, “Todd likes you but loves the Whopper. Todd sacrificed you for a free burger at Whopper Sacrifice.” 184,000 sacrifices later, it’s still going strong.
ADDED: 1/22 – In a sad moment for marketers, Facebook removed the Whopper Sacrifice from their website, but not before nearly 234,000 friends were scarfificed. Facebook claimed that the application violated their policy that people cannot be notified when they are unfriended. A modified version of the app is expected to go live shortly.
Tags: app, applications, apps, BK, Burger King, facebook
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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January 15th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Todd, an follow up is needed! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/14/AR2009011403462.html