How Facebook friends can get you free calls

In the US and want free minutes? Time to install a new Facebook application. It’s called Fund My Phone and it’s part of Virgin Mobile USA’s Sugar Mama service, which lets customers rack up free minutes, usually by sitting through advertising.

Fund My Phone works slightly differently: it gives you free minutes if you encourage all your Facebook mates to endure some advertising spots. Free-minutes-seekers install the application, tell all their friends about it, and for every four mates that watches a one minute trailer of some sort and gives their feedback, free minutes get sent back to the original user.

In principle, it’s a canny idea but how many of people’s Facebook friends are more than vague acquaintances they added to boost their friends list and make themselves look popular? Asking them to watch some adverts for you should separate the wheat from the chaff and you might even get some free airtime out of it to boot.