Consumer Analytics

By Marcus Ranum, [email protected]

Security practitioners have plenty of opportunity to be extra-glum during holiday season: it’s the time of year when a breach can have maximum impact – avoiding downtime and disruption is critical and your systems are going to be processing more credit cards than any other time of the year.

New York -- Facebook has added a new service, called Gifts, which allows Facebook users in the United States to buy gifts for their friends on the social media platform. The new feature, rolled out just in time for the holiday shopping season, has the potential to give Facebook an ongoing supply of valuable personal information.

The Sustainability Consortium jointly administered by the University of Arkansas and the University of Arizona, with support from Walmart and many of its suppliers, is ranked among 10 ideas changing the way people live by Scientific American.

Digital audience measurement firm comScore has launched a new service called Media Metrix Multi-Platform to help advertisers makes sense of how shoppers are interacting with their brands in an increasingly multi-channel world.

Kroger extended its same store sales winning streak to 36 consecutive quarters and reported better than expected profits Thursday.

The grocer reported a third quarter adjusted profit of 46 cents a share that exceeded analysts’ consensus estimate by three cents and said its identical store sales grew by 3.2%. Total sales, including fuel, increased 5.9% to $21.8 billion

New York -- Facebook said referral traffic to retail sites from Facebook on Cyber Monday increased 240%, compared to average referral traffic for the last several Mondays.

Among  U.S. retailers, Walmart, Toys “R” Us, Macy’s, Amazon and Converse were the five most talked-about brands on Black Friday, according to Facebook’s People Talking About metric.

New York -- The sales figures are in for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Using a sophisticated social media analytics platform, SAP tracked consumer sentiment on these critical shopping days via Facebook, Twitter and 165 million other sites across the social web to identify patterns and uncover revealing shopper insights.

View SAP’s sentiment-tracking infographic here.

Where did the idea for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Consumer Face-Off originate?

Reston, Va. -- Spending on Cyber Monday reached $1.46 billion, up 17% versus a year ago, making it the heaviest online spending day in history, according to comScore.

Retail e-commerce spending for the first 26 days of the November-December 2012 holiday season rose to $16.4 billion, up 16% versus the corresponding days last year.

By Brendan W. Walsh, [email protected]