Walmart

San Francisco -- The 15 cities with the most shopping activity on Black Friday 2011 were Manhattan, N.Y.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Brooklyn, N.Y.; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; Chicago; San Diego; Houston; Atlanta; Dallas; Saint Louis;  Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; and Minneapolis, according to mint.com, an online personal finance site.

New York -- The retail industry experienced a weekend that was a roaring success in terms of customer traffic, sales and another key metric that was overlooked: No one died! At least not in the gruesome fashion of a few years ago when a Walmart employee was trampled by an unruly mob as he opened the doors at a Long Island, NY, store on Black Friday. There was an incident this year involving an older man who collapsed at a Target store in West Virginia and later died at a hospital, but it was determined he had a pre-existing heart condition.

New York City -- Family Dollar hasn’t faced much community opposition during an ambitious decade-long expansion program that has left the company with roughly 7,000 stores in 45 states. However, there is a first time for everything and residents in the North Carolina community of Carrboro are pushing back against the retailer’s efforts to open a new store.

The holiday season is about to get underway with what is expected to be the single greatest spending orgy in the history of commerce with more than $20 billion spent on Black Friday compared with $19.3 billion last year, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse.

New York City -- A new retail concept, Wonder!, has opened it first location in Deerfield, Ill. The 135,000-sq.-ft. space is intended as a one-stop shopping solution, focused on children ages birth to seven years. It combines a broad selection of product (including baby gear, furniture, bedding, apparel, and toys) with an array of experiential elements.

San Francisco -- Walmart has the most engaged users across its social media platforms as the days count down to the holiday shopping season, according to a study by the social media and digital analytics company Socialbakers.

Walmart has the most number of fans topping the list at over 10 million fans, with over 7,500 fan posts last month, Socialbakers said. The engagement rate represents fan interactions and although Target ties with an average monthly engagement rate, Walmart has nearly double the number of fans who are actively posting.

Consistent with promotional strategies from previous years, Target is offering some insane prices on popular electronics items. Unfortunately, if holiday shoppers follow the advice of Consumer Reports this year they won’t be coming to Target.

Walmart gave investors an early Christmas gift earlier this week in the form of a long-awaited third-quarter same-stores sales increase, then ruined the holiday spirit by coming up a penny short of analysts’ earnings estimates.