Happy 11/11!

[mrswdk]

We're still only a couple of hours into Singles Day, and even then only in the Far East, but consumers have already blown the hinges off the entire internet:

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. kicked off its annual Singles’ Day shopping bonanza, logging $8.6 billion in sales within the first hour.

Shoppers from at least 192 countries and regions swarmed the e-commerce giant to scoop up discounted lobster, iPhones and refrigerators, at a rate of as many as 256,000 transactions per second. The Chinese company hosted a star-studded gala enlisting tennis star Maria Sharapova and American rapper Pharrell Williams to pump sales. As the event got underway, 93 percent of transactions were done via mobile.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -2-minutes

It's gonna be a swell day, people!

[armati]

if thats true its amazing.

Imagine the commerce when the silk road is built, just the building of the train is going to be bigger than anything the planet has done before.

The best chances of becoming richer than a persons wildest dreams are going to be in the east, course Alibaba has shown thats already the place to be.

[Thorthoth]

Woah, back up here a minute.
Are you telling me that China has broken the internet over a fake holiday where people who aren't having sex celebrate by gorging on refrigerators full of lobster?

That is just too factually funny.

Nov. 11 emerged as a counter-cultural antidote to the sentimentality surrounding Valentine’s Day. It takes its name from the way the date is written numerically as 11/11, which resembles “bare branches,” a local expression for the unattached.

[mrswdk]

Chinese consumers splashed out almost $18bn in the first half of Alibaba's annual Singles Day — roughly the same as was spent in all 24 hours of the shopping frenzy last year.

https://www.ft.com/content/adefdc8c-c63 ... 86f39ef675

[DoomYoshi]

I'm pretty sure the Chinese just wanted a subtle way to celebrate Demi Moore's birthday.

[notyou2]

In Canada, we close stores on 11/11 to honour our war dead.

[mrswdk]

Chinese online store Alibaba sold $25 billion of stuff this 11/11. Had Pharrel Williams perform at their gala.

Chinese 11/11 sounds way more fun than Canadian 11/11.

[2dimes]

It comes from Armistice day. It's kind of odd it does not seem to be a bigger deal in France, it would have been in 1918. I don't know but maybe Hitler and his buddies wrecked it there in the forties.