Royale With Cheese

Something funky is going on with Facebook.

If you've been following my blog or Tweets, you know I was having a lot of fun with the "Whopper Sacrifice" campaign from Burger King. I've been getting mileage and chuckles all week long about the mere threat of trading in some of my friends for a Whopper.

I thought the campaign was sheer genius and said so in a blog post about it last week.

Well, somebody at Facebook clearly disagreed.

Advertising gurus Crispin Porter + Bogusky had come up with a very clever Facebook application that encouraged users to remove their Facebook friends in hopes of getting a free Whopper. Last tally: TechCrunch reported that 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week!

So much for personal loyalty... These people wants a free cheeseburger!

(By the way, thanks for all the clever responses from friends and colleagues in my own personal social graph who started spouting all the classic Pulp Fiction lines. More on that in a moment...)

Well, Facebook has spoiled the partay, gone and shut the sucker down. And it had nothing to do with the metric system.

Inside Facebook reports that the "creative (and aggressive) use of Facebook friend removals as a way to spread the [Whopper Sacrifice] application" forced the FB's hand, and they shut the Whopper Sacrificer down. Or, rather, they haven't shut it down, but rather required the developer to "remove its functionality" for violating "users' expectations of privacy."

Privacy? Over a harmless Whopper Friend Sacrificing application? What's next?

In this most humbling social media marketing moment, I must turn once again to that most glorious of Quentin Tarantino films for spiritual inspiration and counsel to control my rage, the wonderous Jules Winnfield (Samuel Jackson) from Pulp Fiction:

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.

Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness.

For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.

And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

Yeah, check out the big brain on Brett, indeed.

No sooner do they come up with an ad model to breathe new life into the Facebook experience than they immediately suck the oxygen out of the bottle. Play with matches, you get burned. But no risk, no reward, amigos.

And I'm PO'ed! I never even got my free Royale with Cheese.

— Todd "Turbo" Watson, blogger for IBM's On Demand Business Website