Cyber Monday Sales Top $1Billion! Sign Of Economic Recovery

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Manic Cyber Monday Top $1B In Sales



Cyber Monday started as a gimmick to get people to shop at their desks on the first workday after Thanksgiving. But if you promote something enough, it can take on a life of its own.

This year, stores swamped customers with online ads and e-mail deals, and sales could top $1 billion, making it bigger than any single shopping day last year.

Online sales were already running 15 percent ahead of last year's by 3 p.m. Monday, with the biggest shopping hours of the day still to come, according to IBM's Coremetrics tracking service.

"The numbers are really strong," said the service's chief strategy officer, John Squire, who added that he expects Cyber Monday to be the biggest online shopping day of the season.

The Monday after Thanksgiving was dubbed Cyber Monday by the National Retail Federation trade group in 2005 to describe the unofficial kickoff to the online shopping season. The idea was that people returning to work after the long weekend would shop at their desks.

It never really was the busiest online shopping day of the year.

But like any good marketing angle, it spawned imitation. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. retailers offered some kind of Cyber Monday promotion this year, targeting shoppers who didn't want to venture out at 4 a.m. for those in-store deals. In 2007, 72 percent offered a Cyber Monday promotion.

"Retailers are doing everything they can to build up and extend the event aspect of it — tweeting deals every hour, running Cyber Monday ads — like it's such a big thing you can't miss out on," said Stacy Landreth Grau, associate professor of marketing at Texas Christian University's Neeley School of Business.

Rachel Bergman, general manager of e-mail marketing service Experian CheetahMail, said this year the company sent out several hundred million Cyber Monday promotional e-mails, 40 percent more than last year — on behalf of clients like Borders, J. Jill and Bass Pro Shops.

It has rarely been the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season, however — last year it was No. 2 — and this year, online deals have been stretched by retailers throughout the weekend.

Historically the biggest online shopping day of the year comes sometime in mid-December, when shoppers face deadlines for ordering to ensure delivery by Christmas Eve. Last year, it was Dec. 15, according to online research firm ComScore.

But this year, shoppers seem to be in the mood to spend more. On Thanksgiving Day, usually quiet for online shopping, Americans spent $407 million online, 28 percent more than last year. They spent nearly $650 million online the following day, up 9 percent.

Last year, Cyber Monday sales totaled $887 million. This year, $1 billion wouldn't be a surprise, analysts say.

New Yorker Joseph Gallo waited until Cyber Monday to buy the Blu-ray "Back to the Future" trilogy, on sale for $34.99, and separately a pair of headphones slashed to $45.69 from $130 from Amazon.com.

"I get the feeling of deals being better having watched Amazon all last week and today," Gallo said.

Many shoppers don't actually buy at work. They compare prices from their desks, then buy when they get home, said Graham Jones, vice president of merchant accounts for deal aggregator Pricegrabber.com. Peak activity on that site is usually 7 or 8 p.m.

Retailers like Best Buy, Target and others have extended their online deals through much of the weekend and through the week, but they were offering specific deals on Monday.

Target offered a Kodak Waterproof mini video camera, regularly $99.99, for $49.99, and it will offer more deals Tuesday and throughout the week. Walmart.com, which is pushing the event as "Cyber Week," promoted bikes for $39 and a 6.5-quart Dutch oven for $33.

Some shoppers who bypassed discounts over the weekend were rewarded on Monday. At Landsend.com, a girl's jacket was on sale for $39.99 on Sunday, a third off the retail price of $59.50. By Monday morning, the price was $35, and an extra savings came by way of free shipping.

Christy McClung, a student and quality control worker in central Oregon, said she bought a TV at BestBuy.com after she was out of town and missed Black Friday sales.

While she didn't find exactly the TV she wanted, she bought one because it was a good value, she said. "With the free shipping, it was a great deal."

Cyber Monday's share of online holiday spending has grown slightly over the past five years, from 2.5 percent in 2005 to 3 percent last year. That's partly because of shifts in the calendar that make the holiday shopping season longer or shorter, but also because "as consumers become more attuned to deals and discounts, Cyber Monday has become a more important event," said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst for ComScore.

Online spending is still a relatively small piece of the holiday pie, between 8 and 10 percent of total holiday sales.


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Sources: CNBC, MSNBC, The Shoe Dish, Google Maps

Massachusetts Man Denies Involvement In Jihad Terror Plot...Another Zazi

(FBI: "Aspiring Terrorist" targeting shopping mall. The FBI charged a Massachusetts man on Wednesday with trying to join violent jihadist groups overseas, where he hoped to fight American soldiers in Iraq. NBC's Pete Williams reports.)

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(Mass. man accused of terror plot. Mike Loucks of the U.S. Department of Justice remarks on the arrest of a Massachusetts man involved in planning terror attacks at U.S. malls.)

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(Gitmo Detainee restrictions clear Congress.)

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Feds: Mass. man plotted mall terrorist attacks

A Pharmacy college graduate made a defiant appearance in federal court Wednesday, hours after being charged with conspiring with two other men in a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians overseas and American troops in Iraq.

Though not part of the current charges, in 2003 Tarek Mehanna and the two others discussed attacking shoppers in U.S. malls. They abandoned the idea when they couldn't obtain automatic weapons, according to court documents.

Authorities say the men's plans — in which they used code words like "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said.

Mehanna, 27, was arrested Wednesday morning at his parents' home in Sudbury, an upscale suburb 20 miles west of Boston, and appeared for a brief hearing later in the day. When ordered by the judge to stand to hear the charge against him, he refused. He finally did stand — tossing his chair loudly to the floor — only after his father urged him to do so.

"This really, really is a show," his father, Ahmed Mehanna, said afterward. When asked if he believed the charges against his son, he said, "No, definitely not."

Prosecutors: Plot ran 2001 to 2008

Prosecutors say Tarek Mehanna worked with two men from 2001 to May 2008 on the conspiracy to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" Americans overseas, including soldiers and two politicians who were members of the executive branch but are no longer in office. Authorities refused to identify the politicians.

Mehanna — a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston, where his father is a professor — conspired with Ahmad Abousamra, who authorities say is now in Syria, and an unnamed man, who is cooperating in the investigation, according to authorities.

The three men often discussed their desire to participate in "violent jihad against American interests" and talked about "their desire to die on the battlefield," prosecutors said. But when they were unable to join terror groups in Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan, they found inspiration in the Washington-area sniper shootings and turned their interests to domestic terror pursuits while they plotted the attack on shopping malls, authorities said.

Mehanna had "multiple conversations about obtaining automatic weapons and randomly shooting people in shopping malls," Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks said. Prosecutors would not say which malls had been targeted.

Nonbelievers

Loucks said the men justified attacks because U.S. civilians pay taxes to support the U.S. government and because they are "nonbelievers."

The mall plan was abandoned after the men failed to track down automatic weapons, Loucks said.

Mehanna's attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., would not comment on the allegations. Mehanna is being held until his next court appearance on Oct. 30.

Court documents filed by the government say that in 2002 or 2003, Abousamra became frustrated after repeatedly being rejected to join terror groups in Pakistan — first Lashkar e Tayyiba, then the Taliban.

"Because Abousamra was an Arab (not Pakistani) the LeT camp would not accept him, and because of Abousamra's lack of experience, the Taliban camp would not accept him," Williams wrote in the affidavit.

Mehanna and Abousamra traveled to Yemen in 2004 in an attempt to join a terrorist training camp.

The two men sought out a man in a mud hut, NBC reported, someone they were told could hook them up with a jihadist group. But he told them, "all that stuff is gone ever since the planes hit the Twin Towers," according to court documents.

In jail or on "Hajj"

Mehanna allegedly told a friend, the third conspirator who is now cooperating with authorities, that their trip was a failure because they were unable to reach people affiliated with the camps. The men, who had allegedly received tips on whom to meet from a person identified in court documents as "Individual A," said half the people they wanted to see were on "hajj," referring to the pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam, and half were in jail.

"They traveled all over the country looking for the people Individual A told them to meet," authorities allege in the criminal complaint.

Abousamra was rejected by a terror group when he sought training in Iraq because he was American, authorities said.

The men later decided they were not going to be able to get terror training in Pakistan and "began exploring other options, including terrorist acts in the United States," the affidavit said.

Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in November and charged with lying to the FBI in December 2006 when asked the whereabouts of Daniel Maldonado, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for training with al-Qaida to overthrow the Somali government.

Mehanna told the FBI that Maldonado was living in Egypt and working for a Web site. But authorities said Maldonado had called Mehanna from Somalia urging him to join him in "training for jihad."

Authorities said Wednesday that Mehanna and his conspirators had contacted Maldonado about getting automatic weapons for their planned mall attacks.

Carney, who represented Mehanna in the previous case, said at the time: "If this is the FBI's idea of a terrorist, they are using a net that is designed to catch minnows instead of sharks."

After his arrest, Mehanna developed a cult following among Muslim civil rights groups and Web sites that believed Mehanna was wrongly arrested. Web sites like the London-based cageprisoners.com, a human rights group that advocates for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees as part of the U.S. war on terror, asked supporters to write Mehanna in prison to keep up his spirits.

The site MuslimMatters.org asked supporters to pray for his release and published a letter they said Mehanna wrote from prison.

In the letter, Mehanna thanked supporters and said he was being treated well.

"I can only think of the countless imprisoned Muslims in the jails of tyrants around the globe and hope that if it is not Allah's Decree to free them in the near future, that they taste the sweetness that Allah has placed them in prison to taste," Mehanna wrote.

He signed the letter, "Your brother in the green jumpsuit."

Zazi case

The case comes less than a month after an Afghan-born man, Najibullah Zazi, was accused of plotting a bomb attack against the United States.

Authorities say Zazi took a bomb-making course at an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, had bomb-making notes on his laptop computer and acquired bomb-making materials similar to those used in the 2005 London attacks, buying acetone and hydrogen peroxide at beauty supply stores.

Zazi, an Afghan immigrant and permanent U.S. resident, was indicted late last month on a charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held in prison without bail.



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