Inside Facebook

One of the founding features that made Facebook so popular is the ability to easily share photos with friends and family. Of course, among the billions of photos that have been posted, there are inevitably a few that some users probably wish would go away forever. A branded application from detergent maker Wisk is offering to do just that, finding tagged photos of users that they’d like removed from friends’ albums, and requesting those pictures be taken down.

Once users log onto the application, Wisk It automatically pulls up any photos in friends’ albums that have been tagged with the users’ names. There’s also the option to search through friends’ albums to find any photos that feature users and aren’t tagged with their names. Wisk It then sends a message to the friend that has posted the “dirty” photo requesting that it be taken down. Of course, it’s still up to that friend to actually remove the picture or pictures, and if they decline, there isn’t anything more the app can do to delete the photo.

Users can keep track of their removal requests through the application, with categories for “dirty” photos (unread requests, “in the wash” for requests that have been read but the pictures remain, and “clean” for pictures that have been pulled down. The overall application and features are a clever spin on the laundry process — although there’s no literal connection between Wisk’s core product and this app — and the actual purpose of the application could be popular as more and more companies troll social networks to check up on potential and current employees.