Say Goodbye to Whopper Sacrifice

A quick update on the Whopper Sacrifice: It looks like Facebook has burned the Burger King burning tool we reported on earlier, but not before the little app got some big attention. Hopefully this success will return some faith in online advertising and inspire a little more innovation.



Even though Whopper Sacrifice didn't see action for long, 82,771 people dumped 233,906 friends in less than a week. That's a pretty big success for such a simple marketing tool.

Unfortunately, Facebook ruled that the Whopper Sacrifice app violated privacy rules. The problem is that the Whopper app notified people they had been dumped in favor of a burger. Notifying people that they had been removed from a friend's list wasn't the only real problem. Facebook didn't seem to disapprove of the app for the reason its purpose runs counter to that of the site. No surprise.

We just hope that this sparks some ideas for people who create online advertising and online marketing campaigns. We think the era of banner ads and flash animations are over (and should have been over a lot sooner). The great thing about Whopper Sacrifice is that it got people interested without feeling like they were being forced to support or buy Burger King. Granted, it resulted in a boatload of publicity for Burger King, but if they got what they wanted and the public had fun and got some free burgers, how can this be anything but a huge success for everybody? Please, let this be a harbinger of smarter and more innovative online advertising to come!

We've got more tech news about stuff that doesn't require you to sacrifice any friends (though you won't get a burger either):

Steve Jobs to Take Leave of Absence Till June, Apple Trading Temporarily Suspended

Video of Glorious Burnination at the ioSafe Demo

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Google Helping You Go Green

The Top 10 Products at CES