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January 16, 2009 3:51 PM PST

Facebook drops a Whopper

by Chris Matyszczyk
  • 11 comments

You'll remember the hilarious Burger King Whopper Sacrifice promotion that offered you some cheap piece of meat in a bun in exchange of getting rid of 10 of your most obsequious or obscure Facebook friends?

Well, Facebook has defriended it.

You want the deep and meaningful statement from Facebook? Here it is:

"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."

(Credit: CC Nayrb7)

The supposed privacy breach consisted of those entirely disposable friends, people you never liked who requested you to be their friends, people for whom you felt sorry, receiving a notification that they had, indeed, been dumped for one-tenth of piece of meat in a bun.

If I were Facebook's sales staff (and I can tell you some funny stories about them, just not today) I would be wandering into Mr. Zuckerberg's office and giving him at least one-tenth of my mind.

Naturally, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, the Whopper's (and, curiously, Microsoft's) ad agency, was already prepared. On the Burger King Web site, you can now express your feelings in a meaty manner. Yes, you can send an "Angry-gram." That would be a cute little animation that lets someone know "they annoy the hell out of you."

The less cute version of which might be, for some Whopper executives: "Burger off, Facebook."

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About Technically Incorrect

Chris Matyszczyk brings a fresh and irreverent perspective to the tech world in his CNET blog, Technically Incorrect. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

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