A riot broke out in a small Dutch town after more than 4,000 revellers descended on a party when an invitation posted on Facebook went viral.
The schoolgirl had only planned a quiet celebration with a small group of friends to celebrate her 16th birthday party.
When Merthe Weusthuis organised the gathering at her family home, she sent out invitations via the Facebook social networking site.
But she made one mistake - she forgot to mark the event as ââ¬Åprivateââ¬Â.
As details began to circulate, a trickle of acceptances became a flood - and on Friday night the event turned into a large-scale disturbance as 5,000 gatecrashers clashed with riot police outside the Weusthuis family home, on a quite suburban street in a small Dutch town.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
Miss Weusthuisââ¬â¢s initial mistake, in using open-access settings on Facebook, meant the electronic invitation sent two weeks ago was eventually seen by 240,000 people, of whom 30,000 confirmed online that they planned to attend.
But that was not all. An unauthorised campaign was launched to promote the birthday party, reaching high levels of sophistication with the setting-up of a website, as well as a Twitter account which received hundreds of thousands of hits.
Miss Weusthuisââ¬â¢s initial mistake, in using open-access settings on Facebook, meant the electronic invitation sent two weeks ago was eventually seen by 240,000 people, of whom 30,000 confirmed online that they planned to attend.
But that was not all. An unauthorised campaign was launched to promote the birthday party, reaching high levels of sophistication with the setting-up of a website, as well as a Twitter account which received hundreds of thousands of hits.
Full story with pictures & video
Can't Facebook not flag such a universal invite and ask the sender if he/she really wants to send it out to the whole world?
The schoolgirl had only planned a quiet celebration with a small group of friends to celebrate her 16th birthday party.
When Merthe Weusthuis organised the gathering at her family home, she sent out invitations via the Facebook social networking site.
But she made one mistake - she forgot to mark the event as ââ¬Åprivateââ¬Â.
As details began to circulate, a trickle of acceptances became a flood - and on Friday night the event turned into a large-scale disturbance as 5,000 gatecrashers clashed with riot police outside the Weusthuis family home, on a quite suburban street in a small Dutch town.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
Miss Weusthuisââ¬â¢s initial mistake, in using open-access settings on Facebook, meant the electronic invitation sent two weeks ago was eventually seen by 240,000 people, of whom 30,000 confirmed online that they planned to attend.
But that was not all. An unauthorised campaign was launched to promote the birthday party, reaching high levels of sophistication with the setting-up of a website, as well as a Twitter account which received hundreds of thousands of hits.
Miss Weusthuisââ¬â¢s initial mistake, in using open-access settings on Facebook, meant the electronic invitation sent two weeks ago was eventually seen by 240,000 people, of whom 30,000 confirmed online that they planned to attend.
But that was not all. An unauthorised campaign was launched to promote the birthday party, reaching high levels of sophistication with the setting-up of a website, as well as a Twitter account which received hundreds of thousands of hits.
Full story with pictures & video
Can't Facebook not flag such a universal invite and ask the sender if he/she really wants to send it out to the whole world?
