Top Items:
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
Apple's Black Friday Retail Store Sales were “off the charts” — We obviously had to white out numbers above - From Apple's Retail inventory system. — A source inside Apple Retail has shared with us the numbers for Apple's Black Friday sales event. Black Friday is always huge shopping …
Discussion:
Mobile Marketing Watch, Fortune, iDownloadBlog.com, HEXUS.net Latest Content, PhoneArena, Electronista and I4U News
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Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Black Friday E-Commerce Spending Up 26 Percent To A Record $816M; Amazon Most Visited Retailer — As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million …
Andrea Chang / Los Angeles Times:
Cyber Monday retail sales may hit record
Discussion:
Electronista, Hillicon Valley and Social Media
Evelyn M. Rusli / DealBook:
Zynga's Tough Culture Risks a Talent Drain — Zynga's chief executive, Mark Pincus, got an earful from employees last month. — In dozens of e-mails to a companywide list, frustrated workers complained about the long hours and stressful deadline periods.
Discussion:
Uncrunched, Kotaku, @karaswisher and cdixon's posterous
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Michael Arrington / Uncrunched:
Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining … Suddenly everyone's complaining about how unfair things are in Silicon Valley. How hard everyone has to work so darn hard, and how some people don't get venture capital or a nice sale to Facebook or Google even though lots …
Discussion:
Get Off My Internets, @rafat and @dave_peck
Clare Jim / Reuters:
HTC says to tough out downturn, new models coming — (Reuters) - HTC Corp promised competitive new models early next year and said it would stick to its strategy in the face of its biggest challenge since rising to prominence in the smartphone market. — HTC has become the worst performer …
Discussion:
The Register, The Verge, Know Your Mobile, Pocket-lint, Electronista, PhoneArena, SlashGear, Electricpig.co.uk and WMPoweruser
Business Week:
In Some Virtual Worlds, the Thrill Is Gone — Zynga and other social game developers search for the next FarmVille-scale hit — Just a few weeks after Mafia Wars 2 went live on Facebook, Din Shlomi got tired of playing the game. A self-described hard-core gamer from northern Israel …
Discussion:
VG247
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Nick Bilton / Bits:
Disruptions: Fliers Must Turn Off Devices, but It's Not Clear Why — Millions of Americans who got on a plane over the Thanksgiving holiday heard the admonition: “Please power down your electronic devices for takeoff.” — And absolutely everyone obeyed. I know they did because no planes fell from the sky.
Jason Lewis / Telegraph:
Facebook faces a crackdown on selling users' secrets to advertisers — Facebook is facing a crackdown on how it exploits vast amounts of its users' most personal information to create bespoke advertising. — Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg must address privacy concerns or face fines under a new EC Directive
Discussion:
GigaOM, Inquirer, Tech Europe, ITProPortal, PC Pro and London Calling Blog
Nate Bolt / TechCrunch:
Why Instagram Is So Popular: Quality, Audience, & Constraints — Editor's note: Guest contributor Nate Bolt runs the UX firm Bolt | Peters, teaches design research at SVA iXD, and made that one SF to Paris time lapse. — I get asked a lot why Instagram is so popular.
Discussion:
Howard Lindzon
Brian X. Chen / Bits:
A Look at Apple's Spot-the-Shopper Technology — A Black Friday visit to the Apple Store in Palo Alto, Calif., offered a glimpse of the new technology Apple is using to speed purchases. — A store employee, Diego Aguirre, demonstrated an internal iPhone application that, for the last few weeks …
Discussion:
SlashGear, CNET News, The Verge and Redmond Pie
L. Gordon Crovitz / Wall Street Journal:
Horror Show: Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley — To protect copyright, the movie industry favors legislation that would strangle the Internet. — Washington regulating the Internet is akin to a gorilla playing a Stradivarius. Yet many legislators are being urged to play by lobbyists for Hollywood …
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
WikiLeaks delays launch of new online system — WikiLeaks is expected to unveil a new online system this week to allow whistleblowers to pass secrets to its website, as Julian Assange tries to reboot his campaign for transparency under a barrage of legal, financial and technical challenges.
Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:
A Facebook Smartphone - Why? — At the end of last week's Monday Note, I briefly wondered about the rumored Amazon smartphone. Would it follow the Kindle Fire strategy: Pick Android's lock and sell the device at or below cost in order to lubricate the wheels of Amazon's e-commerce of tangible and intangible things?
