Read the full study: http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2013/12/how-did-people-use-facebook-on-thanksgiving-black-friday/ When do people use Facebook on Thanksgiving and Black Friday? Facebook recently opened up access to a new metric that enables us to see exactly when your fans are online. We've examined when people are on Facebook in the past and found that users are mostly on during traditional waking hours. The more local a fan base, the more drastic this timing impacts your brand. We wanted to a take a look at Thanksgiving and Black Friday to see if there were any changes in the data.

1. How Did People
Use Facebook on
Thanksgiving &
Black Friday?
November 28 & 29, 2013

3. Spike on Black Friday Morning
● Typical November activity is closely correlated
with traditional working hours
● Activity tends to peak in the early evening around
6pm PST
● Thanksgiving and Black Friday traffic both
experienced a spike in morning activity
● Black Friday experienced a more significant spike
in the morning, most likely due to more Facebook
users participating in Black Friday shopping

4. Overall Black Friday Traffic Down
Slight decrease in overall activity on Black
Friday despite the spike in morning activity
Hypothesis: Users had a brief opportunity
to use Facebook in the morning, which they
took advantage of, while reducing their
likelihood of returning later in the day.

6. People v Page Noise
● People created a ton of noise on Thanksgiving
morning, while Pages remained fairly quiet
● Pages posted heavily around midnight,
many of the posts were around the topic of
Black Friday deals
● Pages roared with activity on Black Friday

8. The heat map illustrates average November behavior.
As you can see, Fridays tend not to peak at 8am,
as they did on Black Friday.

9. Conclusion
Thanksgiving
● There was an unusual uptick in activity between 5am
and 11am
● Activity later in the afternoon was less than usual
Black Friday
● Less overall traffic compared to similar Fridays
● Experienced a drastic uptick in people activity from
6am to 10am
Our recommendation to each Page is to look at how your
fans actually used Facebook on Thanksgiving and Black
Friday with our newest Pro feature: Audience Online.