friday

Fab is reporting record sales for the Thanksgiving period, with roughly 33 percent of purchases made by way of its mobile apps.

The quirky flash-sales site sold more than $6.5 million worth of product in the span from Black Friday through Cyber Monday -- nearly four times the amount sold during the same period last year, the company said. Cyber Monday was particularly busy. Fab made the most money ever on a single day, pulling in $1.3 million in sales.

Fab said its mobile apps were partially responsible. A third of the sales came from the apps, with … Read more

A lot of things have jumped the shark. The Fonz did it first, literally donning water skis for the stunt and marking the beginning of the end for "Happy Days."

MySpace did it. Even the phrase "jumped the shark" has done it.

And what about the most popular social-networking site? In some people's eyes, Facebook is pulling on its swim trunks and eyeing the big beastie.

Bradley Horowitz, chief of rival Google+, argues that Facebook has already landed on the other side of the shark. Horowitz recently called Facebook out for the way it implements … Read more

Retailers have engineered Black Friday to whip consumers into a buying frenzy, but it turns out it can be good for startups looking for a good deal, too.

Backblaze, the online backup company that headed off a hard-drive price-hike crisis by enlisting friends and family as deputy procurement officers, found itself scouring the ads for good deals again during the holiday buying season. The result: another round of "drive farming" by people willing to help the company.

This time, though, the drive farming was open to the first 200 people who signed up to participate, and Backblaze paid … Read more

Sony sold an impressive amount of PlayStation hardware in the U.S. over Thanksgiving: 525,000 PlayStation 3 consoles and 160,000 PS Vita bundles.

The number of PlayStation devices sold fell short of Microsoft and Nintendo's surprising announcements earlier this week that the companies sold 750,000 Xbox 360 units and 1.2 million Nintendo gaming devices, respectively.… Read more

Barnes & Noble said this morning that sales of its Nook e-reader doubled over the four-day Black Friday weekend.

But like Amazon, which made a similar claim about its long-weekend Kindle sales, the company failed to provide any concrete numbers.

The growth in Nook sales, compared with the same four days a year ago, was propelled especially by an increase in promotional activity by the likes of Walmart and Target, Barnes & Noble said in the earnings report for its fiscal second quarter.

That quarter ended October 27, a month before the Black Friday weekend, so the company's revenue … Read more

Cyber Monday this year took the trophy for the biggest online shopping day ever in the U.S.

ComScore reported that U.S. online spending on Cyber Monday 2012 reached $1.465 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, "representing the heaviest online spending day in [U.S.] history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales."

Breaking the total down, ComScore said that the top category for sales was digital content and subscriptions (up 28 percent), followed by consumer electronics (up 24 percent and "buoyed by … Read more

Fab can put another notch on its trendy Facebook belt -- the quirky e-commerce site said it's made at least 20 percent of its Thanksgiving revenue from shoppers who joined Fab through Facebook.

Overall, Fab saw at least 25 percent of its revenue between Black Friday and Cyber Monday come from social media sites. Facebook led the way during the four-day period, now one of the biggest shopping times of the year.

While Fab didn't say how other social media contributed to its revenue overall, CEO Jason Goldberg did post the traffic breakdown in his blog betashop:

• 65 … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The confetti at Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was made of confidential police documents.

- NEC is designing a suitcase-size DNA analyzer.

- A pill that calls home once you've taken it.

- CNET Exclusives: 35 percent off Outdoor Technology Bluetooth headphones and wireless gear!

- Cyber Monday CNET Holiday Gift Guide.… Read more