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Cyber Monday Sales Top 2 Billion

by Alex David Jimenez

Cyber Monday 2013_photo via iphonehacks.com

And so, as the bruised and battered shoppers from across the fifty holiday-engorged states made their way back to their homes and questionable leftovers, a new beast lay in waiting behind their inauspicious computer monitors and tablets. The Monday after the turkey and gravy fest, and after the menacing crowds and monsters of Black Friday, is the latest great opportunity to present consumers with yet more ridiculous sales and deals – all now available conveniently within the safety of their own homes. It was Cyber Monday. Shopping online was madness. At nightfall the internet sat in the corner of the shower and wept. One phrase surely graced more computer monitors than on any other given day throughout the year: This Site is Temporarily Down.

Cyber Monday is a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. It began in 2005. A press release was conducted by the company Shop.org, publicly stating that the Monday following Thanksgiving was quickly becoming one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. This was based on the numbers of the previous year: The monday following Thanksgiving had been in the top 12 busiest online shopping days of 2004. Shop.org decided to attempt throwing the e-commerce community on the Black Friday bandwagon. It worked. That Cyber Monday saw record numbers: numbers which have increased annually since.

This year broke a new record, pushing online sales over the 2 billion dollar mark in a single day. $2.29 billion dollars to be exact.

Cyber Monday Profits 

2006 – $610,000,000

2007 – $730,000,000

2008 – $846,000,000

2009 – $887,000,000

2010 – $1,028,000,000

2011 – $1,251,000,000

2012 – $1,465,000,000

2013 – $2,290,000,000

 

In contrast, sales for the 2013 Black Friday weekend went down for the first time in seven years. Falling 2.9% from last year’s sales, this year saw 57.4 billion dollars in profits for the weekend. That is a significant pullback considering the numbers had been on the rise every year since 2006. Last year saw 59.1 billion dollars in sales.

The most evident thought-process to be reached by these numbers is right in front of us: everything is moving into the digital age. Cyber Monday was not only successful – it was phenomenal. It wasn’t just the computers either. A whopping 18.3% of online sales were found and processed using tablets and smart phones. Cyber Monday is becoming easier to do, so naturally the numbers are rising. Black Friday is a time-honored and kind of scary tradition, sure, but why chance being flattened to the ground by high-tops and pumps in front of a Walmart when you can sit in your pajamas and work those index-finger muscles?

Cyber Monday CrashesIt’s not perfect yet. There were, as there always are, some technical problems while dealing with the massive number of visitors on e-commerce sites. Several sites did crash due to an overload of volume, including Motorola, Toys’R’Us, Urban Outfitters, Brookstone, Nordstrom, and Barnes & Noble. While most of these companies were back online within a few minutes, they potentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in their absence.

If there is a moral to the story that was Black Cyber Weekend, it must be that, well, we’re all a bunch of greedy and impatient barbarians, and the machines will soon be taking over.

 

Sources: Wikipedia.org, Business Insider, Bloomberg News

 

 

Filed Under: BUSINESS, OPINION, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: america, Black Friday, crashes, Cyber Monday, Internet, opinion, shopping, technology, Thanksgiving

The Hashtag: The Most Powerful Tool on the Internet

by Alex David Jimenez

The Hashtag: A word or phrase preceded by a hash mark (#), used within a message to identify a keyword or topic of interest and facilitate a search for it.

It seems, within today’s modern world, the idea of a society which is not completely interconnected and collectively influential is unfathomable and even somewhat frightening. What was the world without internet? What was a day without cell phones or computers? How did people communicate, or meet, or get directions, or stay entertained?

We have adapted to our modern world with ease, familiarizing ourselves with new technologies and social impacts every day. Certain trends have faded into the world of retro-vintage ancient history, while others have stood the test of time. Since the recent dawn of social media, the world has become significantly smaller. And when Twitter introduced the hashtag in 2007, a new trend was born. It was arguably the most powerful tool on the internet, and perhaps still is.

Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 10.03.00 AMChris Messina, co-founder of the company BarCamp, was officially the first Twitter user to introduce and to actively “use” the hashtag as a means for guiding conversations among groups of people. The concept was initially frowned upon, both by general consumer consensus and by Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone themselves. The founders were uncertain of the potential for the emblem’s impact. They didn’t wholly believe it would catch on. “That stuff is never going to catch on,” they said. “We’re going to build algorithms, we’re going to figure it out, and you won’t have to use hashtags at all. We got it covered.” As it turns out, the hashtag proved itself a worthy tool when friend of Messina Nate Ritter  used the hashtag to tweet about the spread of 2007 San Diego forest fires. The trend caught on. Rather than simply existing as a social-circle engine, the hashtag became a source of live news coverage. It proved itself.

From there the hashtag only grew, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. The tool was used to collectively have a conversation about what was important to us, or what was popular in the world. The hashtag was certainly not under-appreciated once it became commonplace. Advertisers began to see the massive potential of the tool. Using the hashtag to follow what was popular among consumers was only the beginning. Soon companies began to pay for their hashtags to become viral, hoping to promote their products or services on a grand scale. It worked. The hashtag became a common visual piece on everyone’s texts. Our tweets were retweeted more. Our followers grew. Other companies, such as Instagram and Facebook began to use the hashtag, utilizing to its full potential the powerful keystroke. Television shows present hashtags during airtime, hoping to grab a larger audience. Some websites, like hashtracking.com, even offer services with which you can track the most influential tags at any given time.

What exists today is a sort of new universal language, so-to-speak. Using a hashtag can instantaneously connect you with people on the other side of the world. People can quite literally become famous using a single hashtag. This article itself could go viral just because of the hashtags used in its publication on twitter. It is quite arguably the most powerful tool in mainstream technology today. Governments certainly have begun to use the tool to their advantage as well, be it for the benefit of society, or for other sinister intentions. It’s important to pay attention now, with the strength behind this emblem, to the way we use it. As technology advances further, and the world becomes even smaller, everything we say, and everything we tag, belongs to the entire civilized world.

hashtag.jpg#mindblown

#hashtag

#whatdoyouhashtag

 #AMAs

source: forbes.com

Filed Under: TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: #, hashtag, influence, Internet, one direction, power, technology, thehashtag, Twitter

Top Level Domain Name Extensions Revealed

by Lane Campbell

Internet Map
Internet Map
Credit: Wikipedia

Many people have questioned how they might come to own a domain such as a iam.john that could power their website.   These folks have stumbled into extensions of the Top Level Domain Name (TLD) managed by ICANN the governing body of the Internet.  Around two years ago ICANN allowed corporations to spend $100,000 to petition for their own names to be used TLD extensions.  In non-tech speak these TLD extensions are better known as the .com that follows your favorit website name.

Why is this important today?  As the Internet grows and scales to accommodate more and more users there will inevitably be more TLD extensions put into production.  While this is a mostly an invisible process an unfortunate precedent has been set.  With six figure requirements to set new TLD extensions there are fewer consumer benefits to this policy.

If you are curious and want to see This is a full list of Top Level Domain Name Extenions you can register your domain with any of these extensions at your favorite domain registrar.

Let us know what you think about this by commenting!

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, BUSINESS, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: domain name extensions, domain names, Internet, top level domain names

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