China's "Singles Day" Is the World's Biggest Online Shopping Blitz 120
hackingbear writes "While the Cyber Monday after Thanksgiving is the busiest online shopping day in the U.S., it pales in comparison to China's Singles' Day on November 11, which started out in the 1990s as a protest to Valentine's Day. Sales on Singles' Day last year for Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-retailer, totaled more than $3.1 billion, doubling the $1.5 billion spent by U.S. consumers on Cyber Monday in 2012. This year, Alibaba's two ecommerce sites, Tmall and Taobao Marketplace, are expecting sales of at least $4.9 billion."
Cyber Monday? (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting to see the term used here of all places.
Remember when that term was rolled out in 2005 and we laughed? It was a bad marketing term (I mean cyber-anything went out in the 90's) for an obviously-concocted day. The Monday after Thanksgiving was not the busiest online shopping day of the year at the time. http://slashdot.org/story/05/11/29/135240/cyber-monday-doesnt-exist [slashdot.org]
And here we are, a few years later....
Re:How is this a protest? (Score:2, Informative)
No worse than "Mother's Day" or "Father's Day", both started to honor parents
Much like today, Armistice Day [wikipedia.org], which was about peace, but is now about honoring war and it's warriors [wikipedia.org], Mother's Day started out as a day to think about ending war and turned into one about buying overpriced crap.
In 1872 Julia Ward Howe called for women to join in support of disarmament and asked for 2 June 1872, to be established as a "Mother's Day for Peace".
It's quite sad how pro war and consumerism this nation has become.