Cyber Monday: The Phantom Boom

WalMart.com is less precise with its predictions, but the superstore makes it clear that it sees nothing special about Cyber Monday. Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman for the site, says that the online giant is "extending Cyber Monday into 'Cyber Week,'" suggesting that the day itself isn't enough of a boom for the company to capitalize on the "act now!" effect of one-day sales. Instead, WalMart.com will offer online-only specials the entire week, with more each day, as the week progresses. Jariwala notes that between November and January, WalMart.com will receive an anticipated 300 million hits; according to Neilsen/NetRatings, only 2.5 million of last year's holiday hits at Wal-Mart's site happened on Cyber Monday itself.

The brilliance of Cyber Monday is in its branding. When the growth of online retail has a name, it becomes a sensational topic of discussion. Googling "Cyber Monday" produces more than 2.2 million hits, up from 779,000 in 2005. People may not be doing all of their online shopping on Cyber Monday -- but they're definitely talking about it.

And all of that talking has begun to cement the term "Cyber Monday" in our national consciousness. In the two years since the term "Cyber Monday" was floated by an obscure Web site, it's hard to recall whether folks shop online for the Cyber Monday specials, or if the Cyber Monday specials exist because there are so many shoppers already online. In its transformation from statistic to landmark, the day has become a clever chicken-and-egg riddle of online retail. Either way, it is now part of the holiday landscape.