• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, November 27, 2013

You may have heard of this thing called Black Friday?  It’s the day after Thanksgiving, where middle-aged women go nuts on each other in a Hobbesian war of all against all in ladies apparel, a Darwinian struggle for survival in kitchen and bath wares? That thing?

Well it’s not just about hand-to-hand combat in the aisles: people are sharing a lot of information about big retailers via social media, according to a study by social business intelligence provider Shareablee, which released a list of the most-shared retail brands on the Web.

Topping the list for social word-of-mouth sharing is Walmart, which accounts for fully 19.65% of all retail social content “amplified” by shoppers, with a total tally of 823,393 “engaged actions” across Facebook and Twitter in the period leading up to Black Friday (November 1-24), suggesting a high pass-along factor. Next up is Amazon.com, with an 8% share of social WOM, then Nordstrom, with a 7.96% share, Macy’s with a 7.8% share, and Toys “R” Us, with a 7.33% share.

Turning to specific social platforms, Walmart was again the category leader on Facebook, with a unique engaged audience of 615,454 Facebook users, followed by Amazon.com with 361,649, Macy’s with 357,188, Nordstrom with 231,381, and Target with 157,872.

On Twitter, however, Best Buy dominated social sharing with 467,550 followers and 7,387 unique retweeters during the measurement period, followed by Nordstrom with 352,480 followers and 2,960 unique retweeters. Target was in third place -- even though it has more followers (966,752) -- as this audience included just 2,836 retweeters.

See you in the aisles, everyone!  I’ll be the one wielding the cattle prod in consumer electronics.