Celebrity Deaths… Check The Date

What is up with Facebook right now? Every day we get all these posts in our timeline of people posting articles like "Donna Summer Dies at 60" YES she died in 2012.

Just last week, I saw a bunch of people sharing the "news" that Gary Coleman had died. But, he died in 2010. I have a partial explanation for this phenomenon.

There are a bunch of FB pages that do daily almanac posts. In the case of Gary Coleman, the almanac page will write in the status update "On this date in 2010, Gary Coleman passed away..." and then they post the story from back in 2010.

When it get's shared, the status update doesn't show up; just the 2010 headline from the L.A. Times announcing his death. People see that and share away!

Take a look at this and particularly look at the shared number: at this very moment, people are sharing this as if it were news.