Thank you for your comments. Starbucks is running their contest through an app, which is what Facebook has said is required, and we assume that they have received prior permission to run this contest, which is also required by Facebook. That said, the language they use in the app is pretty vague.

With Dunkin’ Donuts, it would seem that since there is no promotion/sweepstakes associated with being the Fan of the Week, that Facebook is allowing this (and has been for 8 months). Both their free coffee for a year and Maurice tab (which incidentally seems to have launched since we posted this) are also both apps, so again, this is allowed by Facebook.

Thanks for the info on Philz. We based our list on the top coffee shop chains in North America, and while you’re correct that they do have more Fans, Port City has over 50 locations and Tully’s has over 100 locations in the US, so that’s how we made the list (actually we had to leave off Caribou Coffee which has over 300 locations and an unofficial Page of over 40,000 Fans because they don’t have an official Page that we could find). Perhaps we can include Philz in our local coffee shops post coming out later this week.

If they did offer an incentive wouldn’t that be in violation of Facebook’s recent terms? In particular the one that states there should be no incentives offered to fans to upload content etc.