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Facebook file/March 15: Party off after 180,000 accept girl's invite

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

March 15, 2011 | 2 min read

Moral of this story: never issue an open invitation to your birthday party on a site with 500 million members

Jess originally intended to ask people in her year only, but told her guests via Facebook they could bring friends. Within 24 hours, the party had more than 20,000 people listed as "attending", prompting the schoolgirl to send an unhappy message cancelling the party: "it's f***in off."

The invitation appears to have been hijacked by members of the chat group Anonymous, resulting in it going out worldwide.

On Monday, the numbers continued to rise, with the number of intending guests reaching almost 150,000 about 10pm.

On her invitation, Jess said she "didn't have enough time to invite everyone" and invited others to do it on her behalf: "[It's an] open house party as long as it doesn't get out of hand."

One guest posted on the party's wall: "That Corey Worthington kid has nothing on this", referring to the 500 guests who attended a now notorious house party in Melbourne after it was advertised on Facebook.

Jess's father, who asked that his name be withheld, said, "My girl is an innocent victim. She was just anxious about whether anyone would show up to her birthday," he said.

He said Jess had invited "a few friends" but did not know how to use the privacy settings on Facebook to stop strangers from viewing her party information.

Police Inspector Peter Yeomans said police had intervened to prevent unwanted people turning up on the night.

"It is a huge number of hits and could have potentially turned very serious," Inspector Yeomans said.

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