Early studies showed that Twitter contributed nothing to Thanksgiving sales this year, at least in terms of traffic to retail sites. But data from Black Friday and Cyber Monday continues to pour in. Analysts at NMIncite read the posts for shopper feedback, while Silverpop found the brand sites with the most check-ins. These reports showed another trend: even if people weren’t shopping through Twitter, they were using the microblogging site to talk about their shopping plans.
We're kicking off our upcoming Social Media Marketing Boot Camp with a special keynote presentation by Ella Chick (left), the digital producer at Anderson Cooper 360°. She'll discuss how the network uses social media for breaking news and leverages social media to draw attention to organizations and causes. Learn more about our program and register here. 
Social shopping site Fab sold more than $6.5 million worth of bearded hats, colorful knives, and 200,000 more unique products between Black Friday, November 23 and Thursday November 29, 2012. The company reports that sales have quadrupled since 2011, when holiday sales totaled $1.7 million.
IBM rocked the Twittersphere this morning with the disappointing news that Twitter contributed absolutely nothing to referral sales on Black Friday. By IBM’s calculation, social media sites referred less than one percent of site visits and an even smaller fraction of sales.
Privacy Groups Ask Facebook to Abort Proposed Changes to Privacy Policy (SocialTimes)
Online privacy groups Electronic Privacy Information Center and Center for Digital Democracy have written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to abandon proposed changes to the social network’s privacy policies. Users would no longer have the opportunity to vote on proposed changes and privacy practices for Facebook and Instagram would be combined.
Pinterest was forced to block Amazon and other sources submitting queries to their servers due to surging traffic and suspected malicious activity during Black Friday, according to Pinterest analytics service Pinfluencer.
Cyber Monday Deals: How to Find the Best Online Sales and Save Some Major Green (The Huffington Post/Reuters)
In a one-day blitz of shopping, consumers are expected to empty their wallets of more than $1 billion on Cyber Monday, the online shopping spree on Nov. 26, according to spending projections from research firm comScore. Cyber Monday 2012 may offer the best deals on technology products this year, said Brian Hoyt, senior writer for RetailMeNot.com, a coupon code site.
Online shopping continues to grow — faster on the desktop Web than on mobile, according to the infographic below, produced by digital marketing company IgnitionOne.
Today is Thanksgiving—a day to spend time with our families and focus on the things we’re thankful for. But as soon as we’re stuffed with turkey, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie we’ll forget about what we’re thankful for and catch the shopping bug.
Get your pins and tweets ready, marketers, because holiday shopping season is about to begin. To ease stress for retailers, Adobe has created a predictive tool that forecasts sales growth figures and online shopping spikes for the upcoming season, also factoring in referral traffic from social media sites. Referrals to retail sites from social networks are expected double, the company reports, and Pinterest takes the lead as the fastest-growing site for driving traffic.
Apple Announces Black Friday Sale (Mashable)
Black Friday is traditionally the only day of the year that Apple offers discounts on its products. While the discounts are small — usually 10 to 15 percent — that can still add up to $100 off a MacBook Air or up to $60 off an iPad.
