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Facebook's developer platform has been used for a zillion marketing campaigns so far, but this one is actually dead-on hilarious. Fast-food chain Burger King has created "Whopper Sacrifice," a Facebook app that will give you a coupon for a free hamburger if you delete 10 people from your friends list. Burger King has put out some interesting campaigns as of late ("Whopper Virgin," "Subservient Chicken"), but this one piques our interest because of how gleefully it pokes fun at our social-networking obsessions. "Now is the time to put your fair-weather Web friendships to the test," the Whopper Sacrifice site explains. "Install Whopper Sacrifice on your Facebook profile, and we'll reward you with a free flame-broiled Whopper when you sacrifice ten of your friends. The funniest part: The "sacrifices" show up in your activity feed. So it'll say, for example, "Caroline sacrificed Josh Lowensohn for a free Whopper." Unfortunately, you can't delete your whole friends list and eat free (however unhealthily) for a week. The promotion is limited to one coupon per Facebook account. My Facebook friends had better appreciate the fact that I made a New Year's resolution to cut out red meat. Hint, hint.

Burger King's wildly popular Facebook application "Whopper Sacrifice," which rewards you with a free Whopper when you drop 10 friends, has been shut down. Social networking just got healthier. Last week, Burger King announced it was teaming up with social networking powerhouse Facebook for a special promotion: If you removed 10 people from your network of friends, the fast-food company would reward you with a coupon for a free Whopper. The story became an Internet sensation, but it's only now getting meatier. As it turns out, a notification feature on the "Whopper Sacrifice" application that lets your friends know they have been replaced by a shot at a free hamburger violates Facebook's privacy policy. "We encourage creativity from developers and companies using Facebook platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users' expectations and privacy," the company said in a statement. "After extensive discussions with the developer, we've made some changes to the application's behavior to assure that users' expectations of privacy are maintained. The application remains active on Facebook."

Burger King, through their insanely creative advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (see their recent Burger King perfume launch), launches a Facebook application that encourages users to remove Facebook friends. Sacrifice ten of them and you got a free Whopper. 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week. Facebook is overjoyed, right? What a great example to show the Madison Avenue agencies on how a big brand can get real engagement from users. This is the future of advertising. Or it could have been, if Facebook hadn't shut it down, citing privacy issues: We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users' expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions. In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained. Did anyone talk to the sales department before pulling the trigger on this? All that happened is the user being dissed got a message telling them, which helps the application spread virally. Without that feature the app is far less powerful. There is no real privacy issue here, just a policy decision by Facebook that people shouldn't be notified when you remove them as a friend. Facebook consistently tell users they can't do things in the name of privacy, despite the fact that those users know full well what they are up to. Unless investor and partner Microsoft makes them do it, of course.