Since January 8 there is a fast spreading rumor that says that Facebook is shutting down on March 15, 2011, because its creator Mark Zuckerberg finds managing the site too stressful.
The oldest question about this rumor on Yahoo Answers makes reference to a post of January 8 by the satirical Weekly World News, which seems to be the one that started the rumor.
The creation of the rumor seems to be the result of the mixture of two different real news. The first one is the announcing by Yahoo that its service Yahoo Video will be closing down on March 15, 2011, and the second one is an opinion article published on CNN in which the author sees a recent investment in Facebook as the “beginning of the end” for this company. This is because, in his opinion, the investment is a sign of Facebook being cashing out.
As indeed Goldman Sachs recently invested $500 million dollars in Facebook, some people state that, besides being false, this rumor is also ridiculous. Facebook already responded the rumors ironically with a tweet that says, "We didn't get the memo about shutting down, so we'll keep working away. We aren't going anywhere; we're just getting started."
This is not the first time that Facebook is mentioned in a massive rumor. In fact, the home page of Facebook says, "It's free, and always will be" since the date stated by a previous rumor for Facebook to start charging its users.
Maybe on March 15 the home page will say “It's free, and always will be, and we are not closing anytime soon.”
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