You there, you who dressed as a sexy panther this Halloween, and are now clicking through the weekend’s photos on Facebook. (The ones of you clutching a vodka and snarling like a kittycat are particularly nice.) Your boss, your exes and your mother are probably looking at them this morning, too. What’s a hungover cat to do?
There’s an app for that. Not an iPhone app, but a Facebook application from the detergent brand Wisk. Wisk-It, which will be formally introduced this week, promises to help get rid of objectionable photos.
Now, be clear about the limits of Wisk-It. It’s not going to restore the fallen bra strap to your shoulder, and it won’t Photoshop your broken heel back together. Wisk-It instead assembles a friend’s photographs (you can limit it to tagged pictures of you, or pull all of her photos), lets you identify the pictures you’d like the friend to remove, and then send a request her way. When the friend installs Wisk-It, it pulls up the offending photos and asks her to delete them.
“Currently, there’s really no easy way or efficient way to remove pictures, so we’re finding that we have cracked the efficient way to clean up your online profile,” said Elisa Gurevich, brand manager for Wisk, owned by the Sun Products Corporation.
The Facebook application, created by the agency TracyLocke, is part of a marketing update for Wisk, which Unilever sold to what is now Sun in 2008. Previously, it was known for its 1970s spots where dirty shirts taunted housewives with chants of “Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar!”
“We thought perhaps we could take our stain-fighting heritage, and take it online to Facebook,” Ms. Gurevich said.
The stain on your reputation, Wisk-It can’t do much about. Meow. STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
interesting, although it doesn't seem to work unless everyone installs the fb app....