“We encourage creativity from developers and companies using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications meet users’ expectations. After constructive conversations with Burger King and the developer of the application, they have decided to conclude their campaign rather than continue with the restrictions we placed on their application,” a Facebook spokesperson told Inside Facebook in an updated statement. – As quoted from Inside Facebook

So even though Burger King had to sacrifice the “Whopper© Sacrifice” it certainly didn’t have to sacrifice brand loyalty as it proved that the love of the Whopper© sandwich was stronger than 233,906 friendships. Personally I was extremely impressed with the creative concept of the app and the “edgy” quality associated with de-friending for a burger. The app fit perfectly with the overall Burger King brand. While many companies are jumping on the facebook app bandwagon I thought it refreshing to see one done right. Kudos to Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Burger King. Hopefully we will see more like these in the future. Even if they only last a week.

In my attempt to explore effective ways for small businesses to use the service I came across  CoTweet - a service developed specifically as a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter. Used by some of the biggest brands in the business - (Ford, Whole Foods, Coca Cola, Starbucks – to name a few) – CoTweet boasts multiple users & multi-account posting, brand monitoring, conversation threading, click tracking and tweet scheduling, as well as other services that work together to create a robust CRM application. As they put it  “Think of it as social CRM — with an emphasis on the ’social’.”

Currently the service is in its beta stage and is free to use. Because of that I took advantage of this opportunity and give it a whirl. Where I think it has the most initial value for small businesses is in its multi-account and multi-authoring capabilities. This allows a social media team to be put in place to collectively manage updates and posts as well as take advantage of the notification and task assignment capabilities of the application. Streamlining the process of message dissemination and delivery is a positive step for any business whether small or not.. and this app has been built around that concept. In fact Twitter itself was built around the same concept and look how well it turned out.