A couple of Wisconsin University graduate students decided to create a Starbucks branded application. The funny thing is that they don’t event work for Starbucks. So far approximately 50,000 people have added this application and it is growing steadily. You can send an receive Starbucks drinks from your friends and that’s all there is to it. Starbucks has a cult following though and as such there are a ton of users using this application.

If you want to sell an application to a brand, this is definitely one way to do it. Imagine if this application was modified so that user information could be collected. The developers of this application have been staying true to the Starbucks brand by giving out free Starbucks gift cards. If I was Starbucks, I would buy up this application ASAP. The amount they would have to spend on building a similar application that has the same number of users is probably more than they could pay these two developers.

There are already 50,000 Starbucks fans using this application. If I was a brand I would be extremely happy about this. Have you seen any other successful branded applications? If you are into drinking Starbucks coffee, go check out the My Starbucks application.