High figures reflects that this 2011 edition of the both horrific and beautiful day in the year flourished quite well.  The most interesting signal? Online gained massive ground this year. Perhaps a large segment of consumers choose for the safety of their home instead of the stampede for the a Xbox 360 package or of course an ipad 2.

We are going to zoom in on the online results. Want to see the figures? Read along!

Online

This year Black Friday boosted the online sales with 26 percent from $648 million to $ 816 billion which is an all time record. Massive as well since the increase from 2009 to 2010 was ‘just’+9 percent.

In total 50 million Americans made a visit on Black Friday related websites. This 35 percent more than previous year.

PayPal

When talking about online sales, you must acknowledge the importancy of PayPal. The digital wallet of millions of consumers worldwide briefly reviewed this online edition of Black Friday.  

Some interesting points:

• PayPal saw more people shop for deals from the comfort of their couches and mobile devices after Thanksgiving Day dinner. In the U.S., consumers shopped on mobile most frequently between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. PST on Thanksgiving.
• On Thanksgiving, consumers around the world shopped on mobile most frequently between 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. PST.
• Thanksgiving 2011 resulted in a five-fold (511%) increase in global mobile payment volume compared to Thanksgiving 2010.
• There was a more than three-fold (350%) increase in the number of global customers shopping through PayPal mobile on Thanksgiving 2011 compared to last year.

Shoppers in these cities made the most mobile purchases through PayPal on Thanksgiving 2011:

1. New York
2. Houston
3. Los Angeles
4. Miami
5. Chicago

Cyber Monday

Today is a massive day as well since it is Cyber Monday. Comscore provided an overview of the results from last year:

As the table shows US consumers spent an average of $ 114.24 per buyer with an average total of 1.90 transactions per consumer. The top 5 of most visited retailers shows an interesting clash of the titans.

Comscore’s Chairman Gian Fulgoni commented on Comsore’s website about Cyber Monday

“We now turn our attention to Cyber Monday, a day that Shop.org says will see eight-in-ten retailers running special online promotions. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding $1 Billion, and we fully expect to see another record set this year.”

“Each of the top online retailers generated significantly greater Black Friday activity compared to last year,” added Mr. Fulgoni. “Amazon.com once again led the pack, with 50 percent more visitors than any other retailer, while also showing the highest growth rate versus last year. However, it is telling that the top multi-channel retailers also showed strong growth in visitors, demonstrating the importance of the online channel to the retail industry as a whole.”

Looking at below footage of this year’s Black Friday, we might see even higher figures for online next year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The complete review of Comscore’s Cyber Monday 2010 can be found here. More intel about  Black Friday 2011 here.

While the whole world’s financial system is shaking, banks are falling and existing currencies like the US Dollar are dropping, Facebook is leveraging its own currency: Facebook Credits.

Already 800 Million Facebook users can pay games in Facebook with Facebook Credits. But Facebook is testing payments with Facebook Credits outside Facebook, on other digital platforms.

Facebook users can now logon to the GameHouse website and spend their Facebook Credits here as well. This way gamers will not have to use other currencies and they do not need PayPal or other payment methods either (Credit card, iDeal, Mobile etc).

Facebook is also planning to extend its Credits to mobile platforms like iOS systems by Apple. The commercial idea behind Facebook Credits? Simple! Earn extra money.

30% of Facebook’s revenues are already generated by Credits. Developers, game houses and other content owners get the other 70%, which is similar to Apple’s iTunes Store.

Well if you extrapolate a few of Facebook’s opportunities for a second or two, Houston we might have a problem. Facebook Credits might become a very powerful currency if you realize that 800 Million have access to it.

Facebook might threaten existing payment systems like PayPal or the Credit Card. But Facebook might also use its Credits as gift vouchers, which can be used to buy virtual goods.

Check in my 2009 article how much we globally spend on virtual goods (article was read over 128,000 times already).

But what if Facebook also launched its Credits in a Gift Voucher that could be redeemed in the physical world, like retail stores?

If we go for an even deeper dive, I will have to refer you to an article I wrote in 2007: Will Social Lending Communities Cut Out Banks? At that specific moment, Facebook was just a small player. Light years away from becoming a player that could achieve world domination.

Well, what if Facebook would offer peer2peer payments and social lending? For small amounts, social lending could be smarter, fairer and more human way of getting money temporary?

Will social lending be Facebook’s next step in leveraging its Credits? If so, Facebook might be cutting out the middleman called Banks. And consumers would be able to loan each other Facebook Credits at a very low interest rate.

If you take a look at social lending company Zopa, might just be an old but still relevant thought?

Zopa is claiming the following: Zopa is a marketplace for money. Lenders get lovely returns, borrowers get low-cost loans and money becomes human again.

Please share us your thoughts on Facebook Credits or social lending…

What’s the buzz? In a presentation today, Facebook’s showed its official currency, Facebook Credits. During this presentation, Liu discussed some of the new features Facebook plans to launch in the near future.

One new feature is called App2user Credits. This is a set of promotions that allow users to earn Facebook Credits in ways that don’t involve paying with their credit card.

Liu presented three examples. First, Liu said that users could earn credits through credit card reward programs (she said Chase was already involved in setting up a program).

A second example involved; Plastic Jungle, the service that lets you sell gift cards you don’t want. And users can earn credits as they shop using services like TrialPay.

Liu said that Facebook wants to make this a platform that everyone can plug into, so it sounds like there will be many other ways to earn credits.

App2user Credits is slated to launch this June. Other future plans: Facebook will be seeding non-paying users with credits (to help get them in the habit of using them) and will also have a way to seed inactive users in the hopes of getting them to interact with apps again.

There are also plans to offer bulk discounting on Credits, which will be paid for using some of the 30% fee that Facebook charges developers to use Credits.

There will also be a feature for ‘auto top-up’, which can automatically refill a user’s account with 50 credits whenever they have fewer than five. Read more at this Tech Crunch post.

Myngle offers a solution by providing students and teachers in different locations with a complete online language instruction platform, containing all the tools needed for synchronous e-learning.

Maybe you’re not very surprised by the fact that Myngle was founded by former eBay employees? Since December 2007 Myngle generated 18.000 users registered for teaching or taking language lessons. Myngle closed a first financing round raising 800.000 euro from both professional as private investors.

On the Benelux Venture 50 conference Myngle was elected one of the most promising ICT start ups in the Benelux. That ex eBay people are behind Myngle can also be distracted by the embracement of VoIP (Skype is an eBay company) and by these gift vouchers, which can be paid with PayPal (PayPal is an eBay company). More about Myngle can be seen here on Dutch TV (with UK subtitles).

How do teacher and student communicate? Myngle offers a toolkit for synchronous learning, which consists of VoIP (Skype) own integrated whiteboard, payment systems (PayPal), feedback and a community environment.

Myngle’s feedback system made up of comments and ratings left by students who were taught by the relevant teacher. These comments and rating will be available in the public Feedback Profile of each member. Extra features will be gradually added to enrich the learning experience, such as podcasts, homework, 3D virtual reality classroom / role plays etc.

‘We conveniently eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction between students and teachers and, with it, the requirement for physical displacement’, says Marina Tognetti, founder and CEO of Myngle.

Why now? The time is ripe for the expansion of the language teaching market from offline to online for a number of different reasons: free of charge high quality VoIP (Skype), high international broadband penetration and whiteboard technology are now available at mass prices.

Also, the increasing success of community websites like Facebook and MySpace (or Hyves in the Netherlands) has expanded communication and social interaction beyond the restricted circle of geographical reach. Last, but most important, the internet generation is reaching now spending power and interest in language learning.

Tell our community how you rate the Myngle concept.