Cyber Monday: A Brief History

A long time ago, back in the pre-broadband dark age known as the 20th century, Black Friday was that magical day after Thanksgiving when we came together as a country to celebrate the true meaning of the holiday season: consumerism! Once technology enabled us to do all that shopping on our couches, in blankets with armholes, marketing gurus scrambled to find the perfect cutesy buzzword for the online equivalent of the U.S.’s busiest retail shopping day.

And it took until 2005 for that neologism to finally be birthed. Cyber Monday was coined by the National Retail Federation for the Monday after Thanksgiving, the year’s most lucrative day of e-commerce. Naturally, that translates into big discounts when you buy online; a raft of big-name online retailers are slashing prices, tossing in free shipping and offering myriad other perks to get people to spend their shopping money online in these lean times.

If the whole thing sounds like a marketing gimmick, well, it is. But it’s a damn powerful one. As CNN reported today, Cyber Monday sales in North America alone have drawn more than 4.3 million visitors per minute (!!) to online retailers.

So, Cyber Monday is probably here to stay. Language is, after all, a virus, and phrases like these gain an almost organic legitimacy the more they’re used. As a story in the Nov. 30, 2005 issue of the New York Times beamed, via the voice of BarnesAndNoble.com vice president Tom Burke: “Cyber Monday is actually taking place. We are just finally putting a moniker on it.” His company, along with Staples, said sales Monday were the biggest this holiday season.

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