A new app from the American Social Health Association aims to spread Chlamydia on Facebook to raise awareness of the disease.
The Morph Monkey Facebook app looks fairly benign at the start. Users can select pictures of their friends to see what their combined child will look like. As the user goes to morph the images, a pop up box informs them that they’ve given their friend Chlamydia (video demo above).
It’s a clever way of spreading the message on Facebook, but I’m not sure how many people will be impressed by being tricked into running an app that is just a marketing tool with a health message. You can try it out here.
thanks to Michael Seibel for the tip
That creative marketing is truly impressive. I suppose you could call it viral marketing… :\
Stupid application. Spam is spam whether they have good intent or not.
That’s awesome. They don’t even need to disguise it honestly, I’m about to spread the love to everyone I know, ha. I actually wish it was called the “chlamydia app” and I could show everyone I’ve given it to and out everyone they’ve given it to right on my profile.
Even more interesting would be if the transfer/infection rate was based on real world statistics, and there was a place to go to get aggregate information on infection rates. It would drive the point home about the actual risk. Something like this might be visible on a graphical social network graph, but it wouldn’t be obvious.
“I’m not sure how many people will be impressed by being tricked into running an app that is just a marketing tool with a health message.”
Have you even been on facebook in the last year?
It’s funny, a few months ago I wrote a Facebook app called “STD Spreader” where you could spread various STDs to your friends. Nobody wanted to add it, so I eventually took it down :-\
@6 Eric Florenzano
This doesn’t actually advertise the fact that it’s infected with an STD just like many STD carriers don’t advertise the fact that they’re infected with an STD (even when they should). Can you see the difference?
I keep forgetting how sexy std’s are.
thanks for the feedback, all.
in the spirit of fun, here is michael arrington’s ‘love child’ with angelina jolie. smokin ; )
http://apps.fac...p;wasinfected=1
Alan
yes, doesn’t diminish the statement though. Just because others do it doesn’t make it 100% right.
It’d be pretty awkward if you actually HAD infected them with chlamydia
Where’s the clap app? I’m sorry, it had to be said. Anyway, this is stupid, and I agree with Josh; spam is indeed spam, no matter what. This doesn’t even give you the opportunity to “protect yourself,” it would seem, so it’s just intrusive and unrealistic. The only awareness this brings is that the ASHA are assholes.