If you weren’t one of the 82K+ folks who sacrificed friends in exchange for a free Whopper in the past week, you may have missed your opportunity.

Citing privacy concerns, Facebook yesterday forced BK and the application’s developers to remove the functionality where Whopper Sacrifice notified people that they were “being removed and ‘sacrificed for a Whopper’ before finalizing the removal,” a violation of users’ expectation of privacy according to Facebook. According to Inside Facebook:

“Facebook has clarified that it has not shut the app down – it still exists – but rather it has required the developer to remove its functionality for violating “users’ expectations of privacy.” Normally, no notification is sent when a user removes a friend on Facebook. However, the Whopper Sacrifice application sent a notification to the friend being removed letting them know they were being “sacrificed for a Whopper” before finalizing the removal.”

So although the application is still live on Facebook, its core functionality has been removed. And since you can no longer sacrifice friends, it’s just a static image linking you to the microsite that supports the recent launch of the Angry Whopper at http://www.angry-gram.com. Not very viral.

Is this shutdown due to poor planning? Certainly a conversation with the Facebook development/sales team could have helped avoid this, as TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington points out. Or is it something that BK and its agencies planned all along? Blogs around the world are already starting to talk about the shutdown, which should create a full second round of media coverage and social media buzz for the burger chain. That may have been the exact goal of the campaign from the start.