That's worth noting. HitWise reported last year that Facebook was number two behind Google on Christmas. People say that Facebook vs. Google will be the Web's biggest battle in coming years - but it looks like Facebook has already won the battle for Christmas.

One Christmas gift Facebook users may not have expected: December's major shift away from Facebook's initial nature as a privacy-centric social network. Apparently that didn't slow people down from visiting the site on the holidays.

Online Retailers Profited from Bad Weather

In terms of profits and revenue, there is some good reason to be positive as well, however. According to ComScore, U.S. consumers spent almost twice the amount of money online during the last weekend before Christmas compared to last year. Besides the general trend towards online shopping we have seen over the last few years, some of these gains were probably also due to the severe snowstorms all around the country that prevented shoppers from even getting to the mall.

Some Bad News

Online shopping, however, remains one of the few bright spots in this depressed economy. According to MasterCard, compared to last year, overall retail sales fell by 2.5 in November and 4% in December through Christmas Eve.

Some More Data from Amazon

In lieu of providing us with any meaningful information about its revenue, Amazon decided to offer a number of quirky facts about its success this year. Here are some of the most interesting numbers:

• On the peak day this season, Amazon's worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 5.6 million units.
• During the period from Nov. 15 - Dec. 10, Amazon sold one copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 every 2.5 minutes.
• Amazon Grocery sold enough coffee to give each resident of the highly caffeinated city of Seattle a cup per day for two months.
• Top sellers in consumer electronics included Samsung's 52-inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV with RED Touch of Color, the Apple iPod touch 8 GB (2nd  Generation) and the Acer Aspire One 8.9-inch netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive, XP Home, 6 cell battery), sapphire blue.
• The weight of all GPS devices sold from Black Friday through December equals the combined weight of 151 Mini Coopers.

For 2008, Google has included a few more jingle bells and whistles. You can track St. Nicholas from your phone with Google Maps for mobile by activating the service and searching for "norad santa." And what 2008 holiday would be complete without a Twitter entity? You can also get tweets from Santa by following @noradsanta.

Even if you're not into celebrating Xmas, this spectacle showcases an interesting application of available technology - and a test for scalability as millions of users pummel the Google servers for information on Mr. C. Stepping back, this always leads me to wonder what would happen if this same type of thinking were applied to other quandaries of tracking and informing the public. Using all of these methods to track Santa Claus could prove very informative for any number of applications.

But enough of that Grinch/Scrooge thinking.

This marks the fourth year Google has participated in the tracking effort. And there's a great backstory to the Santa-tracking tradition at Google.

This seems to be as good of a time as any for us to say, "Thank you." Happy holidays from all of us here at ReadWriteWeb. All the best to you and yours. And whether you're among those who are hoping for a visit from Santa Claus or not, may all of your wishes come true - and if they don't, you'll know where to track down the big guy, thanks to Google.

Photo "Santa Claus" by Grzegorz Łobiński used under Creative Commons

And then along came Facebook...

More Noise to Signal

Top image credit: krisdecurtis