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It seemed like everything was going so well. Holiday mall traffic was said to be brisk, consumer sentiment seemed to be thawing a bit, even the unemployment numbers made a U-turn just before critical mass and started heading nicely downward. Then came reports of exceptions to the general rule of an improving U.S. consumer economy in Q4 2011, most notably from big-box retailer Best Buy, which reported lower same-store unit sales for the quarter and flat revenue.

So what happened; did a piece of the sky fall and someone forget to blog about it? Some clues came this morning from analyst firm NPD Group, which reported a 6% overall drop in holiday consumer electronics sales compared to the same period in 2010. Sales were sharply lower for MP3 players, digital picture frames, point-and-shoot... whoa, whoa, wait a second! MP3 players? What decade are we talking about again?

Amazon's Kindle sales on Black Friday were up 400% over last year, according to the company. The Kindle Fire tablet is now the bestselling item on Amazon.com. Prior to its release, Amazon ordered 5 million Kindle Fires to meet demand.

Amazon also refreshed the e-ink Kindle line this year, introducing a touchscreen version. Amazon is usually cagey about Kindle sales and won't specify numbers or the breakdown across the Kindle family. But 2011 has been the year of the Kindle, and Amazon wants to demonstrate its success.

The biggest shopping day of the year is upon us. PayPal predicts that Black Friday will start on Thanksgiving with Internet users shopping from their couches right after the turkey feast ends. If you're one of the many who will be shopping online this Black Friday, there are a few things you need to know.

This past April Epsilon, one of the largest email marketing companies, announced that its database had been breached. Epsilon said that 2% of its clients were affected, including major retailers like Best Buy and Target. This was a phishing attack, the same kind that's bound to appear on Black Friday.

As many ReadWriteWeb staffers plan their Thanksgiving meals, we wanted to turn today's Big Question towards the turkey-themed holiday. In the U.S., the day after Thanksgiving is a major retail event, complete with $10 televisions and stampeding crowds. Though most of the staff confessed to ignoring the event totally, we wondered if our readers were going to brave the retail battlefield on Black Friday.

Will you be leaving your house this year to join the Black Friday madness?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

PayPal predicts that the real spike in holiday shopping won't happen on Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but rather on Thanksgiving Day right after dinner. And this shopping will all be online, from the couch. PayPal says that shoppers will participate in "couch commerce," otherwise known as sitting on a couch and shopping from smartphones and tablets. A new report from Nielsen concurs with the idea of "couch commerce," indicating that 80% of consumers will be skipping the stores on Black Friday. TechFlash.com takes this idea one step further, calling Thanksgiving Day the new Black Friday.

Let the madness begin. This Friday, also known as "Black Friday", is the busiest shopping day of the season in the U.S.. For Amazon users, however, the day known for profit-busting deals has been extended into a weeklong affair known as Amazon's Black Friday Deals Week.

The online event kicked off this morning and already there is a flood of complaints that you can't click fast enough to get in on the savings.

Do we really need another shopping holiday? Some marketing firms and major retailers think we do. To follow up on the success of Black Friday, the start of holiday shopping season for American consumers, and Cyber Monday, the day when we surf online for the deals we missed at the mall, a mobile marketing firm called Mobigosee is planning to launch "Mobile Tuesday" on December 2nd of this year.