Cyber Monday

November 21--As we all know Black Friday is right around the corner. Black Friday is an unofficial shopping holiday, which according to the National Retail

Federation more than 128 million people will participate in this year. Black Friday has been around for decades, however since 2005 Cyber Monday, has been created and being celebrated on the Monday following Black Friday. Cyber Monday is an unofficial shopping holiday just like Black Friday, however it is has been created for online shopping.

Cyber Monday has been created for those who either missed Black Friday or prefer online shopping. Retailers are persuading shoppers to get online and shop. So if you’re not one of the 128 million who is getting out this Friday to shop, you still have Monday. In addition to stores offering the same in-store deals they will on Black Friday, sites offer special hour-to-hour deals and free shipping. Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Walmart.com, Apple.com and the Gap.com, just to name a few sites offering some of the best deals.

According to the Shop.org, 8 out of 10 online retailers will offer promotions on Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday allows you to skip the madness of Black Friday but not miss out on the deals. "Consumers have come to expect the absolute best online holiday deals on Cyber Monday," Pam Goodfellow, BIGresearch Consumer Insights Directo. BIGresearch is a marketing research firm that conducts surveys for the National Retail Federation and provides analysis of consumer behavior.

According to research firm IBISWorld, Cyber Monday sales are expected to hit a record $1.2 billion, which is a 12.4 percent increase from last year.

If shopping this Monday on Cyber Monday, you should go to the sites you plan on shopping on sometime this weekend before Cyber Monday to check out any promotions or deals they may be mentioning before hand. Also Sign up to receive e-mail and text alerts on Monday from these sites. If you don’t have one already, create shopping accounts with the retailers where you know your going to shop to save time and also insure that you will receive alerts from them.

So if you miss Black Friday, your favorite stores are online, or you prefer to do your shopping online, this Monday, Cyber Monday is your holiday.

By Emma Behringer

Keeping Connected or Stalking?

Social media sites are a great way to stay connected with friends and family, or are they? With all the new updates these sites have it makes it easier and easier to keep track of every move your friends make. Earlier this fall, Facebook made a drastic layout change that had most of the Facebook world in an uproar. Added to the side of your home page was a live action news feed. The feed shows exactly what people are doing such as becoming friends with this person, commenting on peoples pictures and post that you aren't even friends with, attending this event and putting this as their status update. Most people would consider this a whole new level of stalking people, and they could be right. It's hard not to look while it's updating every second that you're on your home page.

Then you have the browse friendship page. This is where you can click on a friendship with two people your friends with and see everything that has ever been active between them. This includes all the pictures they are tagged in together, along with comments they've written back and forth, and even random posts they've both commented on. These actions take staying connected to a whole new level.

What about Foursquare? Awesome site, lots of ways to get free things just for visiting stores and places you go everyday. Considered by some a fun game to play with friends by checking in here and winning points and badges and trying to beat your friends. But Foursquare is an easy way to track people's every movement. Where you go is no longer private knowledge once you start using this site. When checking into a place you can publish it to your other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, where it will then post it to that site so people can see where you are. It sounds like fun and games but do you really want people to know where you are at all times.

Even though we may find this as a great way to stalk people close to us companies and businesses find these as great tools. Ways for them to find out how often people are coming to one of their stores and being able to reward them for visiting often. It's also great for them to see when they're being talked about and keep up with their traffic and fans. Even still people love their social media sites whether it is staying connected or "stalking."

Posted by: Jenna Greene