Traditionally, the day after Thanksgiving Day in the USA, Black Friday has, at least since the 1930’s, marked the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Retailers traditionally opened very early (sometimes even the night before) to offer promotional sales.

As was expected, the bulk of the tweets, 62.52%, originated in the States. What’s interesting to see though is that #blackfriday made its presence felt across the globe. The United Kingdom contributed 15.47% to the day’s total tweets ad even though South Africa ranked 17th place, we were still ahead of many large first world countries.

“Music and social media competitions still achieve good results as can be seen by the top retweets on 27 November,” says Marius Greeff, commercial director at SPARK Media.

@kendricklamar achieved over 26 000 retweets with the tweet “Black Friday. gift from @JColeNC https://t.co/Vte415SuWP”, while Kohl’s (@Kohls) managed over 22 000 retweets for their “Is there someone in your life who’d love an Xbox? RT for your chance to win! #KohlsSweepstakes #blackfriday”.

American outdoor company Rei (@rei) did particularly well on Twitter with over 360 000 mentions over Black Friday.

In South Africa, the Western Cape made the most use of #blackfriday with nearly 60% of the total while Gauteng came in with 26.5% of the total SA tweets.

“Always in search of a bargain or two, globally, 55% of #blackfriday tweeters were women, and 88% of people, with an identifiable age, were aged 35 and over,” says Greeff.

“It is always interesting to see (from a marketing perspective) who, what, where and why, people are discussing globally or at a local South African level on Twitter. These reflect events that are important to them on the day. Last Friday it was #blackfriday, we wait and see what the new week will bring.”

For more information on SPARK Media, visit www.sparkmedia.co.za or phone +27 10 492 8390. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.