Black Friday vs Cyber Monday

I did not go shopping on black Friday for the first time in four years. However, I also did not escape hearing about all of the sales that were going on. Every time I looked at Facebook, someone had a post relating to black Friday shopping. Starting at least a week before, there were commercials on every channel of TV advertising sales at various stores. In the newspaper on Friday, all of the ads were relating to black Friday sales. It seems like that is all anyone talked about on Friday.

However, did you know there is a cyber Monday? Cyber Monday is the online equivalent of black Friday. Some of the best online sales happen on cyber Monday, the Monday following Thanksgiving. To me, it seems like this did not get nearly as much media attention as black Friday. Do you think this is because it is a newer occurrence, or could it have something to do with tradition? In my opinion, a lot of people go black Friday shopping to see people and be involved in all the activity. When shopping online, you miss out on this atmosphere. However, it seems that cyber Monday is a rising trend. Actually, as I was writing this I was watching the news and they started talking about cyber Monday. Apparently, sales are up this year by over 20%. Do you think the increase in sales on cyber Monday will have an effect on black Friday? Maybe next year there will be a shift in media attention from one to the other.

Election Day

Since today is election day, I knew there would be a lot of social media related to the election. I did not expect the magnitude of the posts and tweets about the election, however. As I looked at my Facebook news feed today, it was very rare that I came along a post that was not about voting. Most of these posts simply encouraged others to vote, rather than providing any relevant information about the candidates, how to vote, or why voting is actually important. This seemed strange to me, because as far as I knew, everyone already knew it was election day, or at least didn't need to see their whole news feed filled with statuses telling them to go vote to be able to realize that it is election day. This made me start thinking about the importance of social media such as Facebook and Twitter in the election. Did all of the statuses about voting actually encourage a large number of people to vote that wouldn't have originally?