Many retail sites that cater to people in the UK had a great time of things yesterday.  In keeping with tradition (and barring some strange New Year’s Eve surge), new UK-specific Experian Hitwise data shows that Boxing Day turned out to be the busiest day of the year for online retailers.

If any Facebook employees were still manning their stations two days ago, you can be sure they sent up a cheer as traffic data rolled in.  A report from Experian Hitwise has indicated that, at least in the UK, Facebook received more visits than Google for the first time ever.

At least in the UK, Google may finally be able to put its recent Street View privacy gaffe behind it.  The company’s signed a commitment to improve its handling of data, and as a result, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office has given Google permission to delete the sensitive information it collected by accident.

Facebook is far past the point where it’s an "ooh, look at that" moment every time an important person joins the site.  Another celebrity here or there hardly matters when it’s got more than 500 million users.  Still, it may be worth noting that an official British Monarchy Page has launched.

Posts on the Page actually date back to mid-September, but today marks the Page’s formal debut.  It’s gotten off to a great start, too, already collecting "likes" from 65,536 individuals.

The UK online display advertising market for the third quarter of 2010 showed strong gains compared to Q3 2009, according to the latest report from comScore.

UK Internet users received more than 221 billion display ads during the third quarter, marking a 34 percent increase compared to a year ago.

In the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office has concluded its investigation of Google’s Street View privacy gaffe, and there’s good news and bad news for the search giant.  The bad, which arguably outweighs the good: it’s been judged guilty of a "significant breach of the Data Protection Act."

In a formal statement, the ICO said, "The Commissioner has concluded that there was a significant breach of the Data Protection Act when Google Street View cars collected payload data as part of their wi-fi mapping exercise in the UK."

The U.K. Internet economy contributed $159 billion (£100 billion) in 2009, representing 7.2 percent of U.K. GDP- more than construction, transport, or utilities, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Amazon said today its 70 percent royalty option for its Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) is now available in the UK.

Amazon began offering the same 70 percent royalty option in the U.S. in June. For each book sold from the Amazon UK Kindle Store, authors and publishers can choose to earn a 70 percent royalty, minus the delivery costs.

Some Facebook users who live to the east of the Atlantic can now share their location on the site.  Today, Facebook Places launched in the UK, allowing people to check in and tag their friends (or not) as they move around in the real world.

Nothing’s different about the way Facebook Places operates in the UK compared to the US, so we won’t bother with lots of long descriptions and technical details.  Plenty of documentation already exists.

Depending on their tolerance for awful writing and acting, YouTube users in the UK should now be able to watch around 400 movies for free on the site.  YouTube’s expanded its movies section due to deals with companies like Blinkbox, Lionsgate, MGM, and Sony.

Online retail spending in the UK reached $7.8 billion (5 billion) in July the most of any month this year according to IMRG Capegemini e-Retail Sales Index.

Brits spent an average of $126 per person online, marking a turning point since the lows of the last two years.

The Index has grown by 18% compared to last July, in the biggest annual jump for the month of July since before the recession in 2007. As retailer promotions drew shoppers online, an impressive growth rate of 14% was recorded compared to June.

Consumers in the UK are spending nearly half (45%) of their time watching TV, using mobiles or other communication devices, according to a new survey by government regulator Ofcom.

They are now sending four times as many texts per day than in 2004, spending nearly a quarter of their time on social networking site like Facebook and Twitter and spending 3 hours and 45 minutes watching TV per day.

Next week, European search engine and news portal Wikio will be publishing the rankings for August 2010 of their lists of the top blogs in the many categories under which they’re classified.

Booyah announced today that it is taking MyTown international.

 The company has launched support for MyTown (for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) across Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The company says this makes MyTown the first to support global check-ins utilizing the recently launched Places Web Service via the Google Maps API.

Social media – in combination with overly chatty office workers – may be costing the UK billions in productivity, according to the results of a new study.  Indeed, MyJobGroup.co.uk determined after contacting 1,000 workers that up to