Something interesting happened this morning on Twitter. Thousands and thousands of people clicked on a link labeled "Don't Click," which took them to a Website with a button labeled "Don't Click." When people then clicked that button, it opened a hidden iframe, and posted an update to Twitter with the "Don't Click" message. It suckered all kinds of people, alpha geeks included. Even Kottke. By Friday morning, Twitter had shut it down.
But where did it come from?
Although the link really snowballed today, it's apparently been around for some time. Since Search.Twitter limits you to 30 pages of results, I used Google to try to find the earliest instance of the tinyurl. Surprisingly, the first instances appeared to be in French. I tried searching for the phrase "A Voir Absolument". The first instance I could find was from a Twitter user named Umoor. Given that the site the hack linked to was the same domain that's in his (or her) profile, it doesn't take too much of a leap to assume this is likely the origin. The surprising thing, however, is that he first posted the link 13 days ago. As of yesterday, Umoor had removed the French version of "Don't Click", or "Le Truc du jour" (tip of the day), but noted that anyone else could do it. While Umoor's original posts are deleted, you can still see them in Search.Twitter (although you can delete tweets, they are stil visible in search). I posted the screenshot below.
Hopefully somebody more resourceful than I--or at least with more time--will get in touch with Umoor and get the skinny.
