There were actually 10 separate days that surpassed $1 billion in spending. Cyber Monday, at the top of the list, ranked at the top (for the second year in a row) at $1.25 billion.

Here’s a look at growth from last year:

And the sales pattern through the season for the last five years:

“The 2011 online holiday shopping finished with slightly more than $37 billion in spending, up about 15 percent versus year ago,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “With brick-and-mortar holiday retail estimated to have grown about 4 percent this year, it’s clear that e-commerce continues to gain market share from traditional retail due to the attractiveness of the Internet’s convenience and lower prices.”

“Consumers were especially attracted to the deals and discounts available through digital channels – particularly free shipping, which occurred on well over half of transactions this season,” he added. “Despite their continuing price sensitivity, consumers felt a bit more comfortable opening up their wallets this year, although this appears to have occurred as a result of a decline in the savings rate. Nonetheless, it’s clear that, at least on the basis of top line growth, this was a Merry Christmas for many online retailers. What will remain unknown until retailers report their financial year end results is whether the aggressive pricing and free shipping offers came at the cost of lower margins.”

In case you missed it, this should give you a good idea of the things people have been buying.

We already reported on how great the holidays have been to Amazon’s Kindle, and this is again reflected by the top-selling electronics – all variations of the Kindle.

Here is the full list for each category:

Electronics

1. Kindle Fire
2. Kindle Touch
3. Kindle

Toys

1. Rory’s Story Cubes
2. Qwirkle Board Game
3. Perplexus Maze Game

Video Games

1. Just Dance 3
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Sports & Outdoors

1. Zumba Fitness Total Body Transformation DVD Set
2. Emergency Fire Starter
3. Flexible Flyer Snowball Maker

Home & Kitchen

1. Cuisinart 5-in-1 Griddler
2. Fred M-Cups Measuring Matroyshkas
3. Pure Komachi 2 Series Hollow-Ground Santoku Knife

Books

1. “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson
2. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever” by Jeff Kinney
3. “11/22/63” byStephen King

Kindle Books

1. “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins
2. “Catching Fire” by Suzanne Collins
3. “The Litigators” by John Grisham

CD

1. “Christmas” by Michael Bublé
2. “21” by Adele
3. Duets II” by Tony Bennett

Amazon MP3

1. “100 Classic Christmas Songs” by Various Artists
2. “Mylo Xyloto” by Coldplay
3. “A Very She & Him Christmas” by She & Him

DVD

1. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2”
2. “Bridesmaids”
3. “The Help””

Amazon Instant Video

1. “Super 8”
2. “The Help”
3. “Crazy, Stupid, Love”

Watches

1. Timex 1440 Sports Digital Resin Strap Watc
2. LEGO Kids’ Star Wars Darth Vader Mini-Figure Alarm Clock
3. XOXO Rhinestone Accent Gold-Tone Bracelet Watch

Jewelry

1. 10k White Gold Round Diamond Stud Earrings
2. Sterling Silver Amethyst Butterfly Pendant
3. White Peacock and Pink Freshwater Cultured Pearl Button 3 Pair Stud Earrings Set

Clothing

1. Levi’s 501 Jean
2. Levi’s 505 Straight Fit Jean
3. Levi’s 550 Relaxed Fit Jean

Shoes

1. UGG Australia Classic Tall Boots
2. Crocs Classic Clog
3. BEARPAW Emma Short Boot

Beauty

1. Wonderstruck by Taylor Swift Eau de Parfum Spray
2. Olay Pro-X Advanced Cleansing System
3. NARS Orgasm Blush

Health & Personal Care

1. Philips Norelco SensoTouch Electric Shaver
2. Philips Norelco Shaving System
3. Philips Sonicare Essence Power Toothbrush

Tools & Home Improvement

1. Streamlight Nano Light Miniature Keychain LED Flashlight
2. Smith’s PP1 Pocket Pal Multifunction Sharpener
3. Black & Decker All-In-One SureGrip Laser Level

Automotive

1. Battery Tender Junior 12V Battery Charger
2. Wagan 12-Volt Heated Seat Cushion
3. Mystic Industries Reindeer Vehicle Costume

Baby

1. Baby Einstein Take Along Tunes
2. Vulli Sophie the Giraffe Teether
3. Cloud B Twilight Turtle Constellation Night Light

AmazonWireless

1. Motorola DROID RAZR 4G Android Phone (Verizon Wireless)
2. Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G Android Phone (Sprint)
3. Samsung Galaxy S II 4G Android Phone (AT&T)

Amazon App store for Android

1. Angry Birds (Ad-Free)
2. TETRIS
3. Pandora Internet Radio

Apparently alcohol has played some role.

According to the Kenshoo U.S. retail index, U.S. retailers saw total clicks and online revenue generated by search advertising increase 24% year-over-year.

“These findings focus on the week before Christmas, a critical period for last minute shopping, as well as updated information for the entire holiday season to date,” a representative for Kenshoo tells WebProNews. “The dataset examined by Kenshoo represents more than 25 billion total search advertising impressions, nearly 300 million clicks and over 7 million online sales transactions.”

Online retail search advertising spend increased 39% year-over-year, according to Kenshoo’s findings.

For the holiday season to date, online retail revenue driven by search advertising increased 22% year-over-year. Online retail search advertising spend increased 30% year-over-year and online retail search advertising click-through-rate increased 28%.

“The pace of online shopping in the U.S. continued to surge all the way through Christmas this year,” said Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman. “By and large, retailers anticipated the demand and increased paid search budgets while consumers responded in kind with their clicks and their cash.”

Clearly digital is making a huge impact on multiple sides of the commerce cycle through the holidays. The comScore report found that purchases of digital content (music, movies, TV shows, apps, ebooks) was up significantly on Christmas Day, compared to years past.

Those numbers are for the first 56 daqys of the November – December holidays season, with the most recent week (ending Dec. 25) bringing in $2.8 billion on its own (up 16% from last year).

“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season, and we have now reached a record $35 billion in U.S. online sales for the season-to-date,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion dollar spending days this year.”

comScore points out a dramatic increase in Christmas Day purchases of digital content and subscriptions, including: music, TV, movie, ebook and app downloads, over the last few years. With smartphones and tablets rising in popularity, it’s not hard to see why this would be the case.

In fact, iOS and Android both had pretty good holidays. Android reported 3.7 million device activations over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

“On an average day during the 2011 holiday season-to-date (Nov. 1 – Dec. 26), Digital Content & Subscriptions accounted for 2.8 percent of retail e-commerce sales, but on Christmas Day the category accounted for more than 20 percent of sales,” comScore says. “Consistent with past years, comScore expects sales for this category of products to remain elevated throughout the entire week following Christmas Day.”

This week should be a pretty big week, as people spend their holiday gift money.

On Twitter, Quorus descibed itself as follows:

We are a social commerce software company in Seattle focused on delivering compelling social shopping and marketing solutions for retailers and brands.

While no official announcements have been made, GeekWire is reporting that Quorus co-founder Logan Bowers left to become a software engineer at Amazon a few weeks ago, and that other members of the Quorus team (including co-founder and CEO Michael Dougherty) have also joined in “what appears to be a ‘talent acquisition’.”

Currently, all you get when you go to Quorus.com is a placeholder site from directNIC:

When it was live, Quorus offered a toolbar that you could use on a site like Zappos to easily connect with your friends via social networks and email. Lauren Dugan at SocialTimes walks readers through a demo/interview with Dougherty in this piece from last year. The product allowed users to live chat from the toolbar.

Is this the kind of functionality we’re going to see coming to Amazon?

It’s still unclear whether Amazon is even interested in the software itself. Again, no official announcements, and they’re not talking about the details.

Zendesk recently put out this infographic looking at the need to address online customer support issues:

There’s no better time to consider this than around (and after) the holidays.

Online visitors to department stores such as Wal-Mart and Amazon represented the greatest amount of traffic on Thanksgiving as most online consumers (65%) gravitated to the top 20 retail sites. Unsurprisingly, Wal-Mart.com was once again the top-visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day, making that seven years in a row for the retail giant. Retailers of videos and games saw the greatest hike in traffic with 28% more visitors this year than last year.

Beyond the traffic increasing, online sales as a whole grew when compared to the same period from last year. IBM reports a 39.3% climb in general online sales this year and attributes the growing trend of shoppers using mobile devices in order to find sales as a significant factor for the surge. The greater mobility and accessibility of online shoppers have caused some speculation as to whether Thanksgiving Day will supplant Black Friday as the target shopping day for retailers. With Black Friday more and more resembling a Black Flag mosh pit as customers try to secure coveted discounts on gifts, it’s hardly surprising that more consumers would opt out of the fisticuffs and remain unscathed while completing their holiday shopping.

Much was made about the “cool” factor of Facebook as it was founded. Is it still cool today? Share your thoughts.

Now, it’s more like 800 million (a new report says Facebook had 721 million active users earlier this year). The valuation is much higher than reported at the end of the film. That number escapes me at the moment, and I don’t have the movie in front of me, but I know it’s ridiculously higher now. Recent estimates had it exceeding $80 billion.

Advertising

As the story goes, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hesitant to put ads on Facebook when it was getting started. He wanted to see it what it could become first. He didn’t want it to lose that “cool” factor, which was also helped by its initial exclusivity to students of certain universities. A lot has changed since those days. Now, there are not only ads, but a huge ad platform that lets advertisers target people based on their likes and interests. And with “Sponsored Stories,” something you may have “liked” months ago could show up next to one of your friends’ news feeds as a “sponsored story”. For example, my colleague Josh told me he saw a sponsored story last night telling him that I like “Bing.” These stories are now much more in your face.

But that’s business. Facebook needs to monetize this enormous group of people it has, and that’s what it’s doing. I can hardly knock them for that. But not everyone understands or cares. Why do you think ad blockers are so popular?

Too Many Friends?

According to Facebook, there are 69 billion friendships among their active users. See the four degrees of Facebook.

According to a poll from Poll Position, 14% of Facebook users think they have too many Facebook friends, compared to 9% who said they want more (granted, the rest are ok with the number they currently have).

Too many friends can breed information overload. And if you’re friends with everyone you’ve ever known, there’s a good chance some of them are annoying you – especially if they invite you to a lot of apps and games.

There was even a National Unfriend Day created.

Shopping and Bill Pay

According to Gartner Research (as depicted in this infographic from MoonToast (via AllFacebook), companies will generate 50% of web sales via their social presence and mobile apps. It stands to reason that Facebook will be a major factor in that social presence.

However, The Street recently reported on a survey from BillingViews, finding that 87% of people would not be comfortable buying something through Facebook. On top of that, 94% said they wouldn’t pay a bill through Facebook. Security was cited as a main concern.

Sharing

Molly Wood at CNET put out a popular article the other day that’s generated a great deal of discussion. It’s called “How Facebook is ruining Sharing”. She says, “The slow spread of Facebook’s Open Graph scheme is totally ruining sharing. Here’s an excerpt, which basically sums up her point:

If your friends are using an app like The Guardian or The Washington Post’s new Social Reader, you’ll get an intercept asking you to authorize the original site’s app so that you can read the story. And, of course, so that every story you read will start being shared automatically on Facebook, thanks to the magic of Open Graph!

Now, it’s tempting to blame your friends for installing or using these apps in the first place, and the publications like the Post that are developing them and insisting you view their stories that way. But don’t be distracted. Facebook is to blame here. These apps and their auto-sharing (and intercepts) are all part of the Open Graph master plan.

You’ve no doubt seen plenty of complaints about the “frictionless sharing” that comes with an app like Spotify, where users can essentially spam their friends’ tickers with every song they listen to. There are ways to avoid this, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying to those who find it so. Keep in mind, that this “frictionless sharing” thing is really just getting started. The Timeline hasn’t even been rolled out yet.

Privacy

Privacy has long been a concern with Facebook for many users, though it’s hardly kept the social network from gaining momentum. After the last f8, when Facebook launched the new Open Graph, more concerns followed.

The Poynter Institute said Facebook and news organizations are pushing the boundaries of online privacy and that “Facebook again my have gone too far in its quest to make privacy obsolete and that this time some news organizations could get burned by going along with it.”

Poynter Digital Media Fellow Jeff Sonderman called out new Facebook apps like the Washington Post’s Social Reader, and similar offerings from The Guardian and The Daily, as well as Yahoo News, which has readers sign up to have their reading activity streamed to their Facebook profile.

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore talked about this in another article saying that he saw on Facebook that someone he knows professionally was reading articles with titles like: “Heather Morris on Breast Implants,” and “Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO).”

It’s not that these things are so bad, it’s just a matter of do you want everybody you know to know everything you read?

And there’s that whole tracking thing.

Take This Lollipop had a fun look at Facebook privacy:

Recent reports indicate that Facebook is close to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that would at least keep Facebook from making privacy-related changes that you have to opt-out, and would instead make it so users had to opt in for the changes to take effect.

Spam

Farmville requests and invites to events you’ll never attend are one thing. Getting spammed by your friends’ music listening is another. And getting pornographic images and pictures of dismemberments in your news feed is another still. Last week, there was a highly publicized attack on Facebook which spawned such images, and proved that Facebook is not invincible to such a thing.

Design

Facebook has had many design changes over the years, and usually when there’s a major overhaul, a lot of people are infuriated. That was no different with the last big change, which altered the way the news feed worked and added the ticker. Some people liked it from the start, and others have no doubt grown to accept it, but a lot of people miss the old Facebook, or other older incarnations. Design changes are a natural part of the evolution of any site, but when Facebook does a redesign, it has enormous ramifications for people’s perception of the site, because it has so many users, and it’s where so many spend such a large amount of their time online. Facebook gets points either way for bringing back the News Feed option to view by most recent.

Android

Facebook is pissing off Android users by not giving its Android app the attention it deserves. Facebook’s Android app is buggy at best. The company recently launched a new and improve iOS app, while leaving the Android app largely untouched. It doesn’t have the design or features of its iPhone counterpart, and it’s pretty bad about notifications.

This is a problem. According to Google, 200 million Android devices have been activated worldwide. I wonder how many of those people use Facebook. They’re also adding 550,000 new devices each day, Google also said.

Wrapping Up

I’ll be the first to admit that Facebook has changed the world, and has done a lot of amazing things. No company is perfect, and one can’t help but be impressed by the tremendous growth Facebook has seen in users, functionality and valuation. It really is astounding. They’ve forced other major Internet players to try and compete with them.

That, however, is one reason Facebook can’t afford to alienate users. While Facebook may still be the biggest social network on the block (by far), others aren’t backing down. Twitter seems to be gaining hipness with the youngsters, and is getting better and better, while being largely embraced by all facets of media. Google has a massive empire of users across its product list, and is integrating Google+ into all of those products.

Is Facebook becoming less cool? Tell us what you think.

“The Google Trusted Store badge is awarded to e-commerce sites that demonstrate a track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service,” says Tom Fallows, a Group Product Manager on Google’s Commerce team. “When visiting a qualifying store, shoppers can hover over the Google Trusted Store badge and see metrics on the store’s shipping and customer service performance.”

“When a shopper makes a purchase at a Google Trusted Store, they have the option to select free purchase protection from Google,” says Fallows. “Then, if a problem arises with their purchase, they can request Google’s help, and Google will work with the merchant and customer to address the issue. As part of this, Google offers up to $1,000 lifetime purchase protection for eligible purchases.”

Merchants themselves are voluntarily sharing their data about shipments with Google, if they want to participate in the program. Google also collects customer service data when shoppers seek Google’s help with an issue.

While the badge is only available for a few select stores right now, Google says it intends to expand the program in the coming months. There is an application form here.

Google offers three tips:

1. Align your business around a single customer across many channels rather than a channel by channel experience.

2. Build exceptional connected experiences across devices that let every unique individual know your brand understands what interests them at that right moment.

3. Ensure that your brand can deliver what a customer is looking for regardless of the device, location or time.

Ok, now for a little context. According to Google, online retail sales represent only 9% of all retail sales, and are predicted to represent 11% in the U.S. by 2014 (they are up from 8% in 2009, based on data from Forrester Research).

“Consumers make purchase decisions based on brands and experiences,” says Google’s retail team. “For consumers, a website is the portal to the brand. How (device) and where (location) the brand is accessed is a matter of specific need for information at a unique stage in the purchase cycle. The challenge for all retailers is that expectations for a seamless transition throughout the funnel are high and rising. Persistence of experience delights the customer.”

So the five notions that Google lays out, are as follows:

1. Necessity is the mother of all invention: Downward pressure on the economy increases the desire to save money and make the right purchase decision. Shopping related queriesare up 25% y/y this month and deal related queries are predicted to reach a 195% growth rate this December compared to last year. In order to do find the best value and make the right purchase, consumers spend more time investigating how to find the best value.
2. Moore’s Law in every pocket: Today, gateways (smartphones, tablets, laptops, kiosks, etc.) to real time information are cheap, more powerful and portable than ever before. Forty-four percent of top retailers show product availability online and at store locations. Retailers are beginning to make it easier for consumers to find what they need where and when they need it.
3. Reducing friction increases adoption: Internet connected shopping tools are simpler and easier to use than they have ever been. For example, 28% of top 25 retailers feature buy via mobile/pickup in-store.
4. Transparency increases opportunity: In addition, pricing and inventory availability have reached near 100% transparency for non-perishable goods.
5. Integration enhances the value of convenience over immediacy: Consumers are now empowered to research, price, locate and transact any good/service nearly anywhere in the world within minutes and have it delivered to a doorstep in 2 days. All this, while Americans have less leisure time than they’ve ever had. Click and deliver often sounds better than park and wait in line.

Google is of course pushing its +1 button for online retailers. The company recently announced a couple of partnerships with social commerce platforms Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews.