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This morning, I received a direct message from one of my Twitter friends. It was a very strange message. Check it out:

I clicked on the link, which lead to this:

I checked the Tweet stream of the friend who sent me the direct message. She said she had been fooled into following a phishing scam.

She wasn’t the only one. Originally, the blogspot page directed people to another site which looked like the Twitter homepage. They signed in, giving away their user name and password. Of course, this helps spread the phishing scam via direct messages.

What really happened is that a mockup of the Twitter homepage was hanging out at a very bad URL. The good folks at Twitter captured this screenshot of the site:

These phishing scams hit MySpace pretty hard once it got popular. Now, it looks like we have to watch out for them on Twitter.

Phishing schemes kind of took the shine off the once popular MySpace. Looking back, I think it’s one of the reasons I stopped hanging out on the social network. I saw so many messages that weren’t from my friends even though it looked as though they were. I haven’t noticed the same on LinkedIn or Facebook yet.

If phishing hits Twitter consistently, then it might just be their demise.

What do you think? Did you get an unusual direct message? Think phishing could ruin Twitter? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!

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A lawsuit was filed in Arizona Federal court against Microsoft, Google and Apple by Cygnus Systems, Inc. over use of their just granted patent for “System and method for iconic software environment management.”

As Ars Technica points out:

As Ars Tecnica details the suit has some flaws - Google as yet does not have an operating system, and prior art - a major factor in patent law - “constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent’s claims of originality. If an invention has been described in prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid,” according to Wikipedia.

Add this lawsuit to the rest that impact the industry and have yet to be ruled on…. should be an interesting year in the legal realm.

It’s Christmas Eve. If you’re in need of a last minute gift, might I suggest gift cards? You won’t be alone, contrary to reports that gift cards are on their way out. At least, that’s according to new data on gift card searches released by Hitwise.

Sure, there’s been a dip in searches, but gift cards are very much alive.

Besides, this data doesn’t even include the number of people going directly to a website and ordering a gift card. That’s what I do. I’ve bought e-gift cards for Apple iTunes, Amazon.com and Southwest Air without ever conducting search.

But those conducting searches reveal an interesting trend: searching for discounted gift cards that can be found via Craigslist. Sometimes people get or purchase gift cards they won’t use so they sell them for less than the value of the card on Craigslist.

An analysis of search terms “breadth” shows just how popular this trend is:

Want to win an American Express gift card? Then take the Search Engine Watch Readership Survey and enter to win a $200 gift card.

Related Reading:
Bill Tancer of Hitwise Analyzes Economy on SES Webcast
Keyword Research from Hitwise

You can track Digg via RSS. You can track Digg by simply visiting the site. Now you can track a variety of Digg topics via Twitter.

This is awesome because if you’re like me and keep your Twitter client open most of the day, you’ll always know when things are going hot on Digg. This is a great way to streamline two of your social media management tasks.

Here are the new feeds. (Click here for the links to each one.)

Landing page testing isn’t just about creative; you have to have tech types involved in the process, as well. In today’s By the Numbers column, “Assembling Your Landing Page Optimization Dream Team, Part 4 ,” Tim Ash concludes his four part series on the ideal people you need to maximize your site’s profits.

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In the U.S., we’d say, “Stop the presses.” But, in the U.K., they simply say, “Stop Press.” The expression means that a news item has been inserted into a newspaper after the printing has been started.

I was just sitting down to write about a new video interview with Andy Atkins-Krueger, the Managing Director of Web Certain Europe. The YouTube video has just been uploaded to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel.

That’s when I visited the Search Engine Strategies London site and discovered that Matt Mason, author of “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism,” will be giving the opening keynote on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009.

Stop Press!

Matt is a writer, consultant and entrepreneur, who is an expert on how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. His book tackles the problems and opportunities created by the rise of piracy and its potential as a business model.

According to the SES London conference agenda for Day 1, Matt thinks that the trends emerging from the youth culture are blurring long-established boundaries between right and wrong and unraveling some of our most basic assumptions about business, society and our collective future. He has explored the problems these new trends pose to business and the opportunities they represent, as well.

For example, when pirates create value for society and society gets behind their creations, it doesn’t matter how many lawsuits you throw at the problem — you are assaulting your own potential future. This reality positions piracy as a new business model.

Matt plans to speak about how this model works and how it applies to your business at SES London 2009. I plan to have a front row seat. (I may need to wear my pirate costume.)

This topic was also raised by Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, during his opening keynote at SES Chicago 2008. This is where my original post about Andy Atkins-Kruger comes in.

Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Andy at SES Chicago about Lessig’s keynote and asked Andy to give a quick preview of SES London 2009, where he will be speaking at the Search Around the World: US, Europe & Asia session on Day 1. Check out the interview below.

Social media this and social media that. Why in the world should SEO’s care about social media? In today’s Au Natural column, “Social Media and SEO — Friends with Benefits?,” Mark Jackson talks about the “link” between social networking and optimizing your site.

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The Music Companies versus YouTube debacle continues to unravel one bit at at time. Now, Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Warner, Universal, Sony and others are in talks to create their own Hulu-like site for music videos.

The music labels are “only” making a max of $25,000 per month off of ad revenues from YouTube. But that’s only half the story. The real money is made from a pay-per-play licensing deal.

To be making this kind of direct money off of music videos, which have only been used as a marketing tool up to this point, is a big shift in the music industry.

Universal makes tens of millions on YouTube and they expect to make even more next year. Overall, they expect to make $100 million next year from all of their agreements with various sites.

Since Hulu keeps NBC content on just two sites - Hulu and NBC.com, why would Universal want to restrict their offering to just one site?

Pulling from the world’s largest online video site means less exposure to millions of people. YouTube had 100 million unique visitors in October. Those visitors are concert-goers and merchandise-buyers.

Another factor is how YouTube is no longer just a video streaming site, but a bonafied search engine. YouTube is starting to pass Yahoo in searches conducted. On an anecdotal note, my son conducts searches via YouTube frequently. He hates reading; watching video is a much easier way for him to learn.

Bailing on YouTube would be pulling an entire, effective marketing channel. So, here’s my final warning to the music companies. The numbers speak for themselves.

You’ve heard about keyword research, optimized copy and link building, but did you know that the way your site’s pages are organized affects SEO too?. In today’s SEM 101 column, “SEO Site Structure 101, Part 1,” Ron Jones explains how search engines crawl your site and why it’s important to pay attention to site architecture.

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After writing about how Universal Music is making tens of millions from YouTube this year, I was surprised to see Warner Music withdraw from YouTube.

Round up the usual suspect for the reasons why they’ve bailed: Warner Music wants more money from the advertising revenue being brought in.

Nevermind that YouTube has been struggling to monetize itself. Nevermind that the music industry is struggling since the fall of the cd and the rise of the mp3.

Nevermind the current crappy economy.

Warner wants more money. They didn’t get it, so they bailed on the money they were getting. In a time where CEOs are begging Congress for money to stay afloat, this seems like a stupid move.

But with other licensing deals expiring soon, we may see this scenario repeated like a bad version of Groundhog day.

If companies want to abandon an online video site which is starting to generate more searches than Yahoo and saw a whopping 100 million visitors in October, fine. But they’re shooting themselves in the foot, big time.

via Media Memo

Related Reading:
YouTube Rolls Out HD, Niche Landing Pages
Online Video Wins the 9-5 Hour, Weekdays
YouTube Attracts 100 Million U.S. Online Video Viewers in October 2008