Lindsey Mastis

As Black Friday draws to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the ways social networking played a part.

PETITIONING BLACK FRIDAY

Leading up to Black Friday, a Target employee started an online petition asking that Thanksgiving be saved. The reason, according to the petition: “A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day.” In other words, employees would have to end the festivities early so they could get a full night’s rest before arriving at work that evening. Employee Anthony Hardwick from Omaha, Nebraska, got more than 200,000 people to “sign” the petition on Change.org. The move got a lot of press, but Hardwick was unsuccessful. Target opened as midnight as planned, and it seems the petition only helped to advertise the earlier start time.

Here’s my story about the petition:

NO MORE CYBER-MONDAY

Why wait until Monday to get deals online? According to this article by The San Francisco Chronicle, people didn’t even wait until Black Friday. Online sales on Thanksgiving Day jumped by 39 percent compared to last year. It seems most shoppers must have gotten what they wanted, because on Black Friday, online sales only increased by 20 percent.

PEPPER SPRAY VIDEO

It happens every year. Shoppers get out of control over an item and someone gets hurt. This year, a woman pepper sprayed people while trying to get a discounted X-box game. We usually had to rely on TV cameras or surveillance video to see what happened. Thanks to a shopper with a video camera, we can see the drama unfold on YouTube:

 

MALLS TRACK YOUR PHONE

New this year: Malls are using technology that tracks cell phones so they know how customers move about the mall. This is happening so malls can get a better understanding of shoppers habits and figure out a way to entice them to buy more. According to this article in ars technica, identifying information isn’t being collected. It’s a trial run, and one of the malls is reportedly in Richmond, Virginia. (Personally, I hope it shows malls that they need more escalators. I hate having to walk a half mile to get from floor 2 to floor 1).

ANALYZING TWEETS

Leading up to Black Friday, Mashwork studied tweets and found out who was talking about shopping and what they would buy. According to their infographic:
– More men tweeted about Black Friday
– Most people planned to buy items for themselves
– Most people planned to shop at WalMart, followed by Best Buy
– The most popular item to buy is a shoe: the Black Air Jordan Cement 3s