Grown Up Thinking

As a recent transplant to New York, I haven’t fully embraced New England winters. Luckily, there’s an app that can keep you nice and toasty (and help you avoid a dreaded hat hair situation).

So how does it work? The Pocket Heater app warms your hands through “Patented Technology”—basically, it puts your iPhone’s battery and processor on turbo charge, causing it to overheat and become warm to the touch.

The app is a pretty nifty idea. And while I’m skeptical it may eventually cause my iPhone to self-destruct, it gets extra points for novelty (and for making me use the word ‘nifty’). Perhaps I’ll go rogue and leave my mittens at home tomorrow…

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.