Social Gone Mobile (Literally)
Thursday, December 8th, 2011Volkswagen Netherland is connecting where is counts – Facebook.
The auto company has transformed the company’s iconic vehicles into the ‘fanwagens’, a Facebook-themed vehicles. The Netherland Facebook community was invited to vote on either the traditional VW Beetle or the T1 Bus – the winning vehicle would be built and given to one lucky fan.
The retro-styled, social media inspired vehicle boasts uniquely facebook-related functionality:
- On its dashboard, the ‘fanwagen’ features the ‘feed-o-matic’, a built-in device that prints the last ten posts of a user’s news feed at the push of a button
- Small panel beneath the rear license plate showcases the driver’s relationship status, rotatable via a small scroll wheel to the panel’s right.
- The horn is replaced by the ‘poke’ button
- The door handles of the vehicle are labeled with ‘add friends‘
- A bulletin board ‘wall’ on the side doors of either model lets users leave ‘posts’ and even photos using the included instant camera
- The ‘inbox’ (glove compartment) offers a way ‘to store all of your private messages‘ (instructions – ‘to remove a message, take it out of the inbox‘)
- Privacy settings: ‘all’ (window shades pulled open), ‘friends only’ (curtains at halfway), and ‘only me’ (pulled completely shut).
Although the voting period for the campaign has closed, residents of the netherlands have through december 18th, 2011 to enter themselves into a competition to win the ‘fanwagen’ version of the ‘T1′.
