A social media friend - until you get a better offer?

For some reason I've been incredibly entertained by the entire Facebook flap involving a Burger King campaign. Burger King offered a free Whopper to anyone who would defriend (i.e., remove) 10 of their Facebook friends. As an added bonus, the people who are defriended got a message that their "friend" selected a Whopper over them. After 233,000 plus friends are quickly eliminated, Facebook decides that it can't allow that application to exist, including for "privacy" reasons (i.e., we're not supposed to be "notified" when we get dumped by a "Friend" on Facebook).

Thoughts:

1. Quantifying the value of a relationship - Everyone wants to measure social media relationships. I'm thinking if you have an online relationship that someone will give up for a free Whopper, maybe rethink it. Might want to go for the friends who will buy you dinner.

2. Media campaigns getting funner - Because social media opens up so many more (and less expensive) options for getting a message out, there's opportunity for associations to be more fun than they may otherwise appear to be. And opportunities on Facebook.

3. Enough with the thoughts of privacy - The fun part about Facebook is that it's not private. I genuinely enjoy all the things I've learned about association members and colleagues that I absolutely, positively would not have known without Facebook. But there are still those out there who believe if they post a video, picture, thought online that it's somehow still private. The Terms of Service may give others rights too. And the thoughts you don't know you've been dumped unless someone tells you - well, maybe we actually can tell.

4. Follow Me, Follow You - Apparently with Twitter if you "follow" someone (who isn't otherwise famous), then there's pretty much an assumption they're going to "follow" you back. So depending on how much extra time you have in your work day or life there are people who do this with more than 1,000 people. In an interview with Lance Armstrong he explained that thousands follow him, but he doesn't really follow anyone. That I get. The part where a bunch of people follow each other just to be followed back - that I don't get.

Are you building relationships or building counts with social media friends?