Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, November 30 2015

• Thanksgiving Final Results – OmniChannel Strikes Back: This morning we are releasing the final results from Thanksgiving 2015. What stands out is the Omnichannel players with stores and online marketplaces (Best Buy, Sears, etc.) did extremely well.  This indicates that these ‘Brick and Clicks’ retailers were really able to tie their store and online promotions together with great success. This data is date-shifted to compare Thanksgiving this year  (Nov 26) vs. last year (Nov 27).  In summary, Thanksgiving 2015 blew the doors off, coming in at 43.4% y/y growth compared to 20.1% last year – more than twice the rate of growth.  The trick is while we know that Thanksgiving 2015 was very strong, we don’t know if this will continue through the entire Cyber Five and through all of Holiday 15, or if consumers are shopping much earlier than last year and will taper off as we get past Thanksgiving.  Omnichannel marketplaces led the pack with Google Shopping and Amazon also outperforming. From a device perspective, Smartphones were 58% of traffic compared to last year’s Thanksgiving 35% and a new high water mark for this device type in our data.  From an order perspective, smartphone came in at 37% which was also more than double last year, although conversion rates continue to lag desktop and tablet considerably. Conclusion: consumers not only increased their Thanksgiving sales, but they utilized their smartphones heavily and favored omnichannel retailers.

• Kobe Bryant Takes NBA Retirement News to Twitter, Not TV. Chris Sacca Is Pumped: On Sunday, outgoing NBA star Kobe Bryant opted not to make his expected retirement announcement on broadcast TV. Instead, he went for social media, posting his retirement poem on Facebook and Twitter simultaneously. It links to Players Tribune, a site for athletes from fellow superstar Derek Jeter, which subsequently crashed after the Kobe post. It took about an hour for Twitter to add the news to its Moments tab. (Facebook’s trending section, at least for me, does not have the news, but is teasing a split between NFLer Tim Tebow and a former Miss USA over “lack of sex.”)It took about an hour for Twitter to add the news to its Moments tab. (Facebook’s trending section, at least for me, does not have the news, but is teasing a split between NFLer Tim Tebow and a former Miss USA over “lack of sex.”)

• Amazon releases video showcasing unmanned delivery drones:  Amazon has unveiled what its unmanned drones for package delivery would look like with a video launched on Sunday on the prototype of technology it announced two years ago. The promotional clip, narrated by television show host Jeremy Clarkson, shows a family receiving in about 30 minutes replacement soccer shoes for the one chewed up by its dog. "In time, there will be a whole family of Amazon drones. Different designs for different environments," Clarkson says. The video shows the box containing the shoes ordered by the family fitting seamlessly into the body of the drone. It then rises vertically, in helicopter style, for nearly 400 feet, according to Clarkson, after which it assumes a horizontal orientation, flying like an airplane. Clarkson said the drone in the clip could fly for 15 miles. It was equipped with what he called "sense-and-avoid technology" to sense, then avoid, obstacles in its path. The video shows the drone approaching its targeted landing spot, dropping the package, then taking off again, presumably to return where it came from. The launch of the video appeared to be timed ahead of "Cyber Monday", one of the biggest shopping events for electronics retailers. Amazon did not say when it hoped to have the drones in service.

• Judge Dismisses Yelp Suit Brought by Shareholders: Yelp won the dismissal of a lawsuit by shareholders who claimed they had been fraudulently misled about the authenticity and quality of its reviews, and who accused Yelp of manipulating those reviews to favor paying advertisers. In a Nov. 24 decision, United States District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar in San Francisco said reasonable investors would understand that not all Yelp reviews are real, particularly given the company’s admission that its technology to screen user-generated content is not foolproof. In April, Judge Tigar dismissed an earlier version of the complaint, which sought class-action status. He said the plaintiffs could not sue again because any amendment would be “futile.” Yelp lets users rate restaurants and other businesses on a five-star scale. Positive reviews can bolster sales and negative reviews can harm sales, especially if viewers perceive the reviews as unbiased. Shareholders led by Joseph Curry accused Yelp of inflating its share price by falsely promoting the reliability of its reviews, as part of a calculated strategy to extort businesses into buying ads or making payments in exchange for removing bad or fake reviews. But the judge said only 11 of the complaints accused Yelp of offering to manipulate reviews in exchange for fees, a small number.