* Internet sales on Black Friday jumped to $816 million, up some 26% from last year according to Comscore. Today, Cyber Monday, may very well surpass those figures. Many experts believe today will be the US’s busiest online shopping day of the year, with close to 123 million Americans planning to buy something online, according to a survey commissioned by the US National Retail Federation, an industry lobby group. The federation expects 17.8 million Americans to use their mobile device to shop today, about five times the number in 2009. (BBC)
* MarketWatch reports that Amazon says it sold “four times as many Kindle devices on Black Friday as it did last year.” The new device — which aims to give the Apple iPad a run for its money — costs just $199, compared to $499. (Read a full review here.) The Kindle Fire was the best selling tablet on Amazon.com as well as at Target retail stores.
* Apple sold plenty of iPads, though. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes that Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster spent the day after Thanksgiving as he has every year since 2008: standing in an Apple retail store counting sales. He observed that, in eight hours, iPads and Macs walked out the door at the rate of 14.8 and 10.1 per hour, respectively. Read the rest here.
* Zynga’s chief executive, Mark Pincus, “got an earful from employees last month,” reports the New York Times. A story headlined “Zynga’s Tough Culture Risks a Talent Drain” says employees have been complaining about the (very) long hours they log in at the social gaming giant. The company’s heavy use of metrics to gauge what is and isn’t working in its products, such as FarmVille and MafiaWars, has led to tough deadlines and plenty of pressure.
* Android versus iOS versus Windows Phone 7 — which rules for the enterprise? InformationWeek found out.
* Battle of the tech titans: Ellison vs. Benioff. Fierce competitors need, well, fierce competitors. The latest smack-down? Oracle billionaire CEO Larry Ellison vs. Salesforce.com billionaire CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff once worked for Ellison, who later invested in Salesforce.com, the cloud-computing software company. No matter: Now the two battle for customers — as well as bragging rights as the world’s most visible software mogul. The rivalry is getting testy, check it out here. (Fortune)
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