I came across a couple of articles detailing the story of Nolan Daniels, who took a photo with a powerball ticket with winning numbers and shared it on facebook. Not only did he do this, but he was feeling so 'generous' that he was offering $1M to a random person who shared the photo.
This was the most shared photo in Facebook's history, and of course, it was a hoax. The photo was shared more than 2M times and has about 27,000 comments. Facebook hoaxes have become common place, requesting users to share a photo, copy and paste a message on user walls, or click on various links. While many of these hoaxes are malicious (e.g. viruses, phishing, etc), some of them e.g. powerball ticket, have no reason for being whatsoever. The power of social media to fool millions with no apparent motive is something that is becoming more commonplace, and plays on user behaviors in social media. People like to share information and media, and when motivated by certain rewards ($1M) or certain messaging, they will be quick to act. While negative on the whole, this also has marketing potential for firms looking to reach many and impel certain word-of-mouth behaviors. For now however, I prefer to keep my facebook wall clean.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/03/tech/innovation/fake-facebook-lottery-winner/index.html
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