Facebook shutting down? Um, no.
Alright folks.... who started the rumor?
You know the one I'm talking about: that Facebook is supposedly shutting down its service on March 15th (hmmm, beware the Ides of March, anyone?)
It was a hot rumor all weekend, apparently. And when I got to the office this morning, people were still talking about it on the Interwebs. Yahoo, CNN, Mashable and other online news sources weighed in on the rumor and did their job to discredit it.
No matter that Facebook reportedly had just gotten an infusion of $500 million of investment capital from Goldman Sachs and Russia's Digital Sky Technology.
I thought it was stupid and silly from the get-go. The only interest I really have in the rumor is how it got started. I bet some sleuther can trace the rumor back to its genesis, but don't expect me to do it. I'm busy sipping my coffee and reading the real news on a Monday morning.
Speaking of real news (haha): Anybody believe the rumor about Verizon bringing the Apple iPhone to its network?
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Comments
This article on Weekly World News seems to be the likely culprit: http://bit.ly/hRbKAN .
Personally, I haven't trusted them since they reported that they were in talks to buy Tribune: http://bit.ly/ed0NKs .
Oh, Internet, you are so gullible.
Posted by: Stephen | January 10, 2011 11:08 AM
It got the teenagers all riled up and concerned. As the mother of a 15 year old, I thought it was a hoot. I asked the group to seriously consider whether they thought Facebook would shut down and more importantly, WHY, and that at least got them thinking and then discounting this hoax.
Posted by: Mar | January 10, 2011 11:11 AM
If you have FB friends that are particularly gullible to these and other FB frauds, have them connect with Sophos (http://www.facebook.com/SophosSecurity). Since I began sharing their alerts (and pointing friends to their FB page), I've noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of bogus items that appear in my feed (e.g. I'll bet you can't watch this video for 10 seconds, claims of shocking photos, etc.).
And I do believe Verizon is announcing the iPhone tomorrow (Tues). Given how VZW execs danced around the questions during CES, and the special invites to tomorrow's event, how it could it be anything else?
Posted by: Bill | January 10, 2011 11:29 AM
It could be related to this opinion piece that ran on CNN.com Friday: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/07/rushkoff.facebook.myspace/index.html?hpt=T2
The author connects the coincidental timing of AOL and MySpace's large payouts with their subsequent failures. Neither is entirely dead yet, but neither lived up to the promise. Big money (the author suggests) is a sign of getting while the getting is good.
My favorite quote: "... it's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won. It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order."
I think he's right.
Posted by: Adam Bachman | January 10, 2011 11:40 AM
Oh whatever would we do without our facebook to connect with our real friends and families??!! Would we actually have to start picking up the phone to talk with our so-called "friends"? - If facebook weren't in the media enough, it has now been brought forth even more, bravo to whoever thought of this latest rumor...
Posted by: RachelEJ | January 11, 2011 12:37 PM