I was very intrigued when i first heard about burger king's new marketing trick (whopper sacrifice http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/), as I've always enjoyed their crazy tv commercials:
I am MAN
And another...
Kickn-Chickn
Another..
But this new sacrificial spin allows people to receive a free whopper if they sacrifice 10 facebook users. The idea behind this seems to be to try and prove that the value of social networks are very transparent and to show that people will choose getting a free whopper in lieu of saving their online connections, and this is very blatantly promoted by sending a message to the sacrificed detailing whats happened and how much more valuable the whopper was to that person than you.
Oddly nearly 170,000 facebook friends have been sacrificed over a course of ~3 days! That puts it at ~60,000 friendships being destroyed on facebook per day. How long till there are no more friends on facebook? Is it possible for a whole social network to be destroyed by a collection of this "innovative" web marketing techniques? Is the tool that is the web really secondary to a whopper?
Lets look at each question in more depth. Imagine this trend of offering users to hades converted into a coupon for a service, or a much greater range of items for free, creating a whole new genre of web marketing/advertising were to take off. Could we see social networks be brought to their knees by the likes of burger king and mcdonalds?
The next question really needs a detailed understanding of what a friend online really means. For the majority of cases it reflects a real relationship which exists in person and exists merely for the sake of easy communication and transmission of ideas and images, videos etc. Yes there are many more connections created between people who have maybe never met in real life, but how valuable are these connections? Removing friends with people you meet regularly effects little to nothing, although today's facebook generation is transforming this meaning. Just look at any high school dynamic and it will become obvious how important "in a relationship" really means on facebook.
Is the web doomed then? Will the death be caused by the whopper? Next time someone offers you a whopper in lieu of an online friends, save your health and the web.
