AP – Young people tweeting from BlackBerrys and iPhones are driving the growth of Twitter in Africa, with South Africans by far the most vociferous, according to new research published Thursday.

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Research: South Africans most active tweeters
(AP)

Reuters – Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker by volume, is expected to remain barely in the black in the fourth quarter, with its new Windows Phone models yet to compensate for diving sales of its legacy smartphones.

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Nokia seen struggling in early days for Windows Phone
(Reuters)

Reuters – Samsung Electronics Co said on Wednesday it was not interested in taking over Research In Motion after shares of the BlackBerry smartphone maker jumped more than 10 percent following a tech blog report that it was seeking to sell itself to the South Korean firm.

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Samsung says not interested in buying RIM
(Reuters)

Digital Trends – Oh dear, RIM may be trying to get us all excited about BlackBerry OS 10, but when reports appear that the company is canceling smartphones set to run it, it doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence regarding an expedited arrival.

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BlackBerry Milan and Colt canceled, all hopes for OS 10 lie with the London
(Digital Trends)

Short Version I find myself looking at the Nitro HD with mixed feelings. In some ways, it’s exactly what I’ve been asking for from LG, and in others it simply brings about disappointment. The software, in particular, failed to impress me. Hopefully a much more clogged 4G LTE network from AT&T (compared to the like, seven people that are using it now) will still find a way to outweigh the lag on what should be a high-end Android handset. Features: 4.5-inch 1280

In an effort to get customers buying pre-paid deals more regularly, LivingSocial has launched a new subscription service called “LivingSocial Plus”. For $20 a month, members get $25 in “Deal Bucks” credits that are automatically applied to their next purchase as well as access to closed deals. LivingSocial is cleverly pitching buyers on Plus with a checkout graphic that shows the price of the currently viewed deal instantly reduced by the $5 in bonus Deal Bucks. Subscription services like this could solve a fundamental problem of deal providers where users only stop by to purchase especially lucrative or relevant deals. If these program gain traction, providers could establish a consistent revenue stream, get users buying more frequently, and score free cash if credits are never redeemed. Expect rampant copying if competitors see the subscription model working. LivingSocial Plus is only in beta now, so its URL redirects to the general site if you’re not in the test base. A  Help center article confirms its existence. though. The pre-paid deal provider started offering membership to deal buyers around Black Friday. Previously the only way to earn Deal Bucks was to invite friends to the service. The deal provider has been aggressively innovating in search of new models that could save it from the decline impacting Groupon. It just launched LivingSocial Instant and Room Service  last month that lets people get discounted food delivered on demand. While the $20 that buyers actually paid for with Plus are good for 5 years, the $5 in bonus bucks expire at the end of each monthly billing period. This create a sense of urgency where members rush to buy deals just to get that extra $5 off. The whole daily deals model is built on this notion of perceived value exceeding what users have to pay, even if they’re paying for things they don’t need. Meanwhile, it’s really the deal providers that could win since most purchases net them far more than $5. In this way, the subscription model fits perfectly with LivingSocial and any other deal provider’s business. By clustering lower quality, higher margin deals at the end of the billing period when users are desperate to spend their fleeting bonus credits, providers could coerce members into buying deals that make them more money. Access to closed deals is a great addition to the subscription package, since buyers may be willing to pay for it but it doesn’t cost providers anything. LivingSocial may have figured out the next big thing in daily deals. Now it just has to watch out for copy cats offering even bigger bonuses.

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“LivingSocial Plus”: A Monthly Subscription Model That Could Improve Deal Site Retention

As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent). That’s an impressive jump considering the 2009 to 2010 increase in Black Friday spending was only 9 percent. Thanksgiving Day saw an 18 percent increase in online spending to $479 million. U.S. consumers have spent $12.7 billion already in the first 25 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, up 15 percent from the corresponding days last year. comScore says fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, which is an increase of 35 percent versus year ago. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple. Experian Hitwise also reported similar traffic results, revealing that US total visits to the top 500 retail sites increased 2% on Black Friday 2011 compared to 2010. Amazon was the top retail site receiving traffic on Black Friday for the 7th year in a row, followed by Wal-mart and Best Buy, respectively. Consumers were also increasingly looking online for information about offline and web-based Black Friday deals. For example, Black Friday deals site bfads.net saw 3.9 million unique visitors, up 51 percent versus last year. TheBlackFriday.com followed with 3.2 million visitors, up 137 percent from last year. Of course, Cyber Monday is tomorrow and it could be the peak day for the entire holiday shopping season. Last year, Cyber Monday was the heaviest day of online spending ever, with sales exceeding $1 billion . Considering the peaks we are already seeing with online spending this season, tomorrow could bring record sales for e-retailers.

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Black Friday E-Commerce Spending Up 26 Percent To A Record $816M; Amazon Most Visited Retailer

Mobile is growing as a medium for ecommerce, with users sourcing deals from their phones and tablets before visiting physical stores according to a new study by Usablenet , The company which powers mobile sites for 100 top U.S. retailers including JCPenney, Aeropostale, and REI tracked 18 million page views and 1 million mobile users over Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It saw mobile traffic to its clients was up 60% from the same period last year, with Thanksgiving sending more traffic than the following day. Usablenet also found that iOS devices accounted for 42% of the traffic, trumping Android, and trouncing the tiny traffic from Windows and Nokia devices. Earlier today, Leena reported that Black Friday online retail spending was up 24.3% this year , and that mobile increased it share of total traffic and sales. In addition to driving sales directly, though, mobile is facilitating offline sales and product pick-ups. Usablenet tells me, “Thanksgiving activity focused on finding and purchasing deals such as deals of the day, driven from email marketing along with high usage of the purchase online and pick up in-store option.” On Black Friday, mobile usage centered around finding store locations, browsing reviews, and accessing previously saved wish lists while people walked aisles at their local merchants. These insights can help retailers plan for next year. They should look to send out email marketing and deal notices early on Thanksgiving, as that’s when people make decisions of where to shop. This could work better than distributing promotions right at the start of Black Friday when customers may have already set a shopping agenda. Traffic by mobile operating system also mirrored sales, with iOS taking the biggest cut, but less than last year. Android is creeping up, accounting for 34% of mobile traffic up from 28% in 2010. BlackBerry still represents a respectable 15% of mobile traffic, while Windows and Nokia each made up less than 3%. If this trend continues, by next year it may be just as important for big retailers to offer Android apps as iOS ones.

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Thanksgiving + Black Friday Mobile Traffic Up 60% From 2010

Thanksgiving brought record online retail sales for the holiday, with spending up 39.3 percent over Thanksgiving 2010. And today, IBM Coremetrics data shows a 24.3 percent growth in online sales on Black Friday compared to the same period last year. Mobile traffic on Black Friday was 14.3 percent of all retail traffic compared to 5.6 percent in 2010. Sales on mobile devices surged to 9.8 percent from 3.2 percent year over year. As we saw with PayPal stats from Thanksgiving and Black Friday, mobile shopping volume is increasing by over 500 percent this year. Mobile shopping was actually led by Apple devices, with the iPhone and iPad ranking one and two for consumers shopping on mobile devices (5.4 percent and 4.8 percent respectively). Android came in third at 4.1 percent. Collectively iPhone and iPad accounted for 10.2 percent of all online retail traffic on Black Friday. As predicted by eBay, Google and others, tablets were a major platform for shoppers this year. IBM says that shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices with conversion rates reaching 4.6 percent compared to 2.8 percent for overall mobile devices. IBM took a deep dive on conversion rates of mobile shoppers vs. online shoppers and traffic from social networks. Mobile shoppers demonstrated a laser focus that surpassed that of other online shoppers with a 41.3 percent bounce rate on mobile devices versus online shopping rates of 33.1 percent. Shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 0.53 percent of all online sales on Black Friday. Facebook led the pack, accounting for 75 percent of all traffic from social networks. There was actually a 110 percent increase in discussion volume around Black Friday sales on social networks compared to 2010, with conversations centralized around sharing tips on how to avoid the rush. Topics included out-of-stock concerns, waiting times and parking, and a spike in positive sentiment around Cyber-Monday sales. Department stores sales were up 59.0 percent from this time last year, mainly because of the strong deals and online shipping incentives. Home goods also reported a 48.8 percent increase in sales from Black Friday 2010 and apparel sales were also strong this holiday with Black Friday numbers showing an increase of 47.2 percent over 2010. Health and Beauty online sales were up 34.2 percent year over year. Considering the strength of online sales so far, it should be interesting to see if Cyber Monday, which tends to be a peak day for online retail, can surpass the sales from Black Friday.

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IBM: Black Friday Online Retail Spending Up 24.3 Percent