Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: Welcome to Cyber Monday

Written by Erin Barker

Monday, December 1. 2008 at 11:25 AM EST Post a comment

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As spending in the November days leading up to Thanksgiving dragged at a 4 percent decrease from last year, retailers had feared a poorly performing Black Friday. But things didn't go quite so badly as they'd feared (apart from a couple deaths): According to comScore Inc. , online sales totaled $534 million for the day, amounting to a 1 percent increase from last year. And at least that's an increase, right?

Despite glum predictions, consumer electronics was the fastest growing segment, with sales increasing by 219 percent from Friday, Nov. 21, to Friday, Nov. 28, according to Nielsen Online .

The Nintendo Wii was the most searched for item on eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY), and 3,171 of the consoles were purchased through the site. Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iPod Touch was the top electronics item on Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN).

But now that Black Friday is over, what about Cyber Monday? Historically, the Monday after Thanksgiving (a.k.a. today) has been a big predictor of the overall spending during the holiday season -- over the past few years, year-over-year growth rates for Cyber Monday and the season as a whole have fallen within just a few percentage points of each other. So stay tuned for a more accurate holiday spending forecast (provided that the unpredictable economy doesn't upset even this reliable bellwether).

In other news:

After failing with Beacon, Facebook is once again attempting to stalk you, this time with the slightly more subtle Facebook Connect. This new feature allows users to log into other sites with their Facebook login information and see what their Facebook friends are up to on those sites, The New York Times reports. So far, sites like Hulu LLC , Digg, The Discovery Channel, and Geni have signed on.

Despite dire economic conditions, The Huffington Post is doing better than ever, still riding its election-driven wave of popularity. After receiving a $25 million investment from Oak Investment Partners , HuffPo is now valued at just under $100 million, BoomTown's Kara Swisher reports.

Tags: Amazon, Business, Facebook, Funding, Social Networks

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