Burger Kings’ Whopper Sacrifice has been Sacrificed

So says the smart Burger Kings' Facebook app page and web site home.
After more than 82,000 users sacrificed over 233,000 of their friends, Facebook decided to disable the application.
As far as I know, Facebook managers didn't like the way the sacrifice was notified to the friend list of the performer while keeping the victim unaware. As a matter of fact, according to Facebook's privacy policy, when you remove a friend from your list the latter's not warned by the system of your choice, neither this is made public to all your friends. With Sacrifice App though this was a private process no more as it implied somewhat of boosting your disregard from that particular person you sacrificed over a Whopper. Burger Kings didn't show to be angry at FB and made a joke of its own "defeat".

The goal was clear, the procedure simple: sacrifice 10 of your Facebook friends and get a coupon for a free Angry Whopper. Done.

Whopper Sacrifice is a great example of a cleverly designed marketing tactics. It was not just capable to exploit (surf) the success of a killing social network like Facebook, but basically used gluttony as a lever! This marketing tactics' sin driven!

On a more social science -mostly semiotics- aspect this marketing app, let's call it experiment for the occasion, is interesting because it shows how ephemeral many so-called online friendships are. The irony behind the word "Sacrifice" is devilishly cynic, especially when put beside the items burger on one side and friends at the other, both encompassed by sacrifice, a ritual gesture which spiritually bonds the performer and the victim. It's like a little demon whisper into your hear that you know you have friends who are not worth a good 37 cents of beef (one tenth of a Whopper) so you better sacrifice them in exchange of the amount of meat.

I imagine marketers at Burger Kings says something like "hey, just get all those guys and gurls who have hundreds of friends the right chance to sweep through their list and remove all the crap-friends they don't even remember why the did add at the first time". I call it cynical marketing and flipping engineering to online trends and offline people habits. Brilliant.

Pictures are copyright of Burger Kings Inc.