Deployment of Coca-Cola Freestyle fountains, which started three years ago, has now reached the mark of 1,500 units installed across the United States. These machines have a digital screen offering a choice of over 100 of the company’s drinks. The latest versions also have the ability to mix different drinks and so to create one’s own “cocktail”.

To promote this feature, Coca-Cola has just launched a Facebook app which allows you to mix a drink at home, and then to save and give it a name.

At the moment, this would appear to be a service of limited interest, but this could change in the near future. By next year, the app will able to create 2D bar codes which can be read by the distributors which can then mix the drinks that have been created online.

Tests will be carried out at the beginning of 2012 on an initial batch of machines fitted with a bar code reader.