Can Click-and-Mortar Hold up on Cyber Monday?

Can Click-and-Mortar Hold up on Cyber Monday?

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By Edward F. Moltzen, ChannelWeb

7:26 AM EST Mon. Dec. 01, 2008

If you thought Internet retail crashes were a thing of the past, one needs only remember the horror story of Apple's iPhone 2.2 software launch and iPhone 3G rollout this year to realize that's not the case.

So even though there remain a significant number of questions over whether the economy's travails will hold back the success of today's Cyber Monday - - the day when people are said to buy holiday gifts online following the end of the Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. - - it might be worth watching.

A running news ticker of sorts, at the microblogging site Twitter.com, is trying to keep up. Storefrontbacktalk.com is running this page at Twitter as a continuing update of which retail sites are working and which are buckling in the Black Friday aftermath. (Hat tip: Steve Friedberg.)

As of the 7 a.m. hour, Eastern Time, there didn't appear to be any major snarls at retail sites. Plenty of time remained in the day, though.

"Black Friday" online turned in a 1 percent, year-over-year increase for online retailers over 2007, , according to comScore. While that may appear tepid compared to earlier years, it's actually better than some expected and on Thanksgiving Day itself, there was a six-percent, year-over-year increase in online retail sales.