Netlore Archive: Chain letter circulating among Facebook members claims the service is becoming too slow due to overpopulation and members must prove they are active by forwarding the message to others.
Description: Chain letter / Hoax
Circulating since: December 2007
Status: False
Chain letter example contributed by K. Sararas, Dec. 17, 2007:
Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated, There have been many members complaining that Facebook is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is that there are too many non-active Facebook members And on the other side too many new Facebook members. We will be sending this messages around to see if the Members are active or not,If you're active please send to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks, The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space, If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: New platform, old hoax. Compare the above to the "Hotmail Overload" chain letter which began circulating in 1999:
WARNING WARNING
Hotmail is overloading and we need to get rid of some people and we want to find out which users are actually using their Hotmail accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass thise-mail to every Hotmail user that you can and if you do not pass this letter to anyone we will delete your account.From Mr. Jon Henerd
Hotmail Admin. Dept.
Not a word of which was true, of course, and even though it was labeled a hoax by the national media, that didn't discourage folks from forwarding the ridiculous message hither and yon for the next several years. By 2001 somebody had dolled it up with fancy new graphics, but it was still the same chain letter and it remained in circulation as recently as 2003.
In 2007 the concept was borrowed and morphed into the claim that Facebook is overpopulated and user activity is being tested via chain letter. It is no more true now than it was four years ago when it was alleged that Hotmail was doing the same thing. Facebook officials have made no public announcements to the effect that the service has become "overpopulated." Admistrators of social networking sites as massive as Facebook don't issue misspelled and ungrammatical chain letters to gauge user activity. Even if they did, they wouldn't announce to members that they "need to get rid of some people" to make room for the rest.
File this one in the trash bin where it belongs.
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Sources and further reading:
Hotmail Overload
Netlore Archive, Oct. 1999Hotmail 'My Account Is Active' Hoax
Netlore Archive, Oct. 2001
Last updated: 12/19/07
