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Monday, February 28, 2011

Saudi king to buy Facebook? Arab, Iranian sites fall for joke post

On Sunday, a site called Dawn Wires published this story:
In what is being termed as pure Wall street Gordon Gecko tactics, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has decided to make an offer of $150 billion to buy out Facebook. Inside sources within the kingdom suggest that he is very upset with Mark Zukerberg for allowing the revolt to get out of control. In a personal meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and King Abdullah on Jan 25, 2011, Zuckerberg had promised that he would not allow any revolt pages to be formed on Facebook even while he allowed Egypt and Libya revolt pages to be formed. But little did King Abdullah know Zuckerberg. Had he seen the movie “Social Network”, he would have been better advised than to trust Zuckerberg.

Left with no option, Abdullah advised by Goldman Sachs has decided to buy out Facebook and “clean out the weeds”. The offer on the table is $150 billion.....

According Goldman report, the many advantages of buying out Facebook far outweighs the cost of the transaction. Goldman Sachs made a presentation to King Abdullah of how the facebook could be used to cement his position for ever. Never again will his kingdom see another revolt. The presentation also involved some Facebook pages of bikini clad models profile among other profiles. Sources reveal that King Abdullah had made up his mind immediately and spoke to Lloyd Blankfein to complete the transaction as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile king Abdullah has now logged on the Facebook and was buzy profiling some of the models in the Goldman Sachs presentation.
The post was not only obviously meant to be humorous, but it even says explicitly
Sunday Humor
(Sunday Humor article at Dawnwires.com are meant to humor our readers. They may or may not be the truth.)
However, the Arabic media picked up on the story and published it straight. It is at Ratan News, Firas Press and elsewhere.

Even funnier, the Tehran Times copied the English report verbatim on its site - even correcting some misspellings from the original piece!

(h/t Folderol)