FACEBOOK Says It wont Shut down on March 15th

Internet faux news site Weekly World News posted an outrageous story that Facebook will be shut down on March 15th 2011, due to the stress it has put Founder Mark Zuckerberg through.

Normally this type of news would not even be worth our time and effort, but an unfortunate situation occurred where thousands of viewers actually believed the story and shared it on Facebook. Over the past hour, 40 of my 320+ friends shared this story, and I’ve received a couple messages and emails about it from “worried” fans. I expect that the situation will get worse, sparking more controversy over the Internet.

Here is a snippet from the article:

PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March. Managing the site has become too stressful.
“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”
Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.
“After March 15th the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business.”

So just to confirm, this is a fake story by a faux news site.

This silly rumor exploding on the Internet this weekend, alleging that Facebook is shutting down on March 15 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg “wants his old life back,” and desires to “put an end to all the madness.” 

[UPDATE] We have official confirmation from Facebook Director of Corporate Communications Larry Yu that the rumor is false. We asked him via e-mail if Facebook was shutting down on March 15, to which he responded, “The answer is no, so please help us put an end to this silliness.” He added, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down and there’s lots to do, so we’ll just keep cranking away like always.”

Let’s think about this for a minute. Would Facebook decide to shut down the company just a few days after announcing a round of funding, consisting of $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, on a valuation of $50 billion?

The spurious report was started by a site to which we refuse to link, known for its reports of impending attacks of alien spaceships and false reports of a Michelle Obama pregnancy.

The fact that this absurd hoax spread so efficiently makes us wonder: Will people believe anything?