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Could this be the scariest tweet ever? Twitter’s blog post explanation is somewhat vague and benign sounding: Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed. As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. Boy, that’s an understatement! Twitter was hacked by a group claiming to be the “Iranian Cyber Army.” TechCrunch has the screenshot and additional details: Iranian Cyber Army THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To…. NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA? WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST Take Care. Yowsers! Clearly, this is some kind of vengeance for Twitter’s active involvement in the recent Iranian elections fiasco–something our own government encouraged . I don’t know what’s the greater threat here. That something that we rely on so much can be hacked relatively easy, or that I millions of people were unable to tweet “Going to bed, night all.” Scary stuff!

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Twitter Hackers Warn: “Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples”

The results are in: Cyber Monday (and Black Friday) = success ! The numbers are actually up from last year, despite the state the economy is still in. And according to Hitwise, social sites helped to drive sales. (Yeah, FOR REAL.) Their data shows that not only was US traffic up to social sites over the holiday weekend, but downstream traffic to online retailers was also up—especially to Amazon (Cyber Monday winner), Wal-Mart (Black Friday winner), Target, Best Buy and Toys R Us. Wal-Mart also saw the highest increase in downstream traffic from Twitter (among the Retail 500 that Hitwise tracks). However, let me just pull out my favorite wet blanket—sort of. Let’s see, how can I put this? #1—Cyber Monday is a made-up holiday. Nobody outside of Internet marketing/retailing has ever heard of it and it has nothing to do with their shopping patterns. However, there’s good news here, too. We are a nation (world?) of procrastinators—and another day is actually the biggest (revenue-wise) online shopping day of the year—and it’s yet to come . The thinking behind Cyber Monday, created in 2005, was that workers returning from their Thanksgiving holiday would use the Internet to do a lot of their holiday shopping. (At work? Don’t they have the Internet at home, where they have all those glossy ads from stores to compare prices? Were they too lazy/agoraphobic to go out on Black Friday? (Hey, no worries, me too.) Clearly, the logic behind this “holiday” was always flawed.) Two years ago, it was “ Green Monday ” (although now there seems to be some confusion as to whether that label applies to the first or second Monday in December)—with $881M in online sales (versus $733 on Cyber Monday, tied for tenth among the big online sales days in 2007). Last year, it was the day after Green Monday, with $887M (versus $846M on Cyber Monday)—but with this year’s Cyber Monday total the same as last year’s highest sales day (and last year’s highest sales day only a 1% increase over the year before), could we hope for anything higher?

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Social Sites Help eCommerce (and Your Annual Reality Check)

All of the talk of how things were on ‘Black Friday’ is now followed by the yearly quest for the Cyber Monday data. We in the online world love to see just how much the shift to online commerce continues to overtake the traditional way that goods and services are sold. Whether these numbers are inflated or given too much credit is always a concern but this year’s trends, at least from a few sources, points to the continued rise of online growing while brick and mortar struggles. To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one. As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales. Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF) : E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03 Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively. Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order. Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order. Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year. November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping 45% plan to purchase items online 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items 27% will use the internet for product research 25% will go online for gift ideas One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise. According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group. So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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The Cyber Monday Data Is Here!