Last week Mashable, "the social media guide", ran a story with the headline "Bing! Ballmer Says You're Fired" which contained a video of an alleged former Microsoft employee that had been fired for not being enthusiastic about Bing during a company meeting. It was claimed that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's own CEO had laid-off the man himself.
As it turns out the whole thing is a hoax and Frank Shaw, Corporate Communications at Microsoft confirmed this in a comment on the Mashable post. "Please mark this as funny but not true" writes Shaw who also notes "this is clearly a hoax and you should mark it as such in the headline".
It appears this was a common case of post first and ask questions later. In Mashable's defense the author did state "we can't verify if the video is authentic in nature, but we have contacted the guy who uploaded it for comment". Unfortunately with a headline stating "Bing! Ballmer Says You're Fired" then many believed the video was genuine. Ballmer was famously forced to deny accusations that he threw a chair at ex-MS employee Mark Lukovsky who told Ballmer he was joining Google.
Warning: Video contains profanity
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