Social media moves Black Friday shopping into the future

By Jessica Zombek – Managing Editor

While most of you were enjoying your turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and the ever-famous green bean casserole, places such as Wal Mart, Target, and Macy’s were setting up their stores for what seems like the biggest day of the year: Black Friday.

After a forced nap from the overdose of tryptophan, thousands of people grabbed their caffeinated beverages and hit these famous retailers starting at 12 a.m. Nov. 26. The biggest sales of the year were American Eagle and Aeropostale, their entire store was 50-70 percent off until 10 a.m. Target, Wal Mart, and Kohls had door-busters that were uncalled for. Kohls had over 400 door-buster sales.

A newbie to the Black Friday tradition was social media. At 9:30 p.m. Thanksgiving night, the first 300 people to check into Toys “R” Us using Facebook pages, Foursquare, or Yelp earned a 15 percent coupon for purchases of $150 or more.

Radio Shack also teamed up with Foursquare and created the “Holiday Hero” badge. Whoever unlocked the badge received 20 percent off their entire purchase.

Say you didn’t have time to unlock the badge, that’s okay because just by checking in to Radio Shack got you 10 percent off your entire purchase.

You can still take advantage of these social media deals because this runs until the end of December. Also if you check into any American Eagle or Hollister store, you get 10 percent off your purchase at AE and 20 percent at Hollister, these offers also run through Dec. 31, 2010. If foursquare doesn’t interest you, log on to your Facebook and go to the Sears page, “Like” the latest offerings and reap in the specials.

Now that Thanksgiving is over and the leftovers are dwindling, many of you are beginning to brainstorm gift ideas. Keep some of that hard-earned cash and look out for the on going Black Friday deals.