FAIRFAX, Va., Nov. 29, 2010 -- Which stores were most talked about on Twitter leading up to Black Friday? To find out, E.Life, a social media monitoring and analysis vendor, used its Tweetmeter software to track nine of the top retail brands from November 18 through November 25. More than 281,000 tweets were analyzed.

The most-mentioned store was Walmart, with 156,000 tweets over the one-week period. Walmart received more than three times as many tweets as any of the other brands that were monitored. Best Buy and Macy's were closely tied for second place, with 47,552 and 41,950 tweets respectively. Of the nine brands, J.C. Penney's received the least attention, with just 202 tweets about the brand. The full results are published in a PowerPoint presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/ElifeUS.

An interactive map of the tweets published at www.elifemaps.com shows that the cities with the highest tweet volume were New York with 3483 tweets, Chicago with 2134, Atlanta with 1990 and Los Angeles with 1902.

Other findings include:

• The top 25 cities accounted for 72,620 tweets, or only about 25% of all tweets about the brands, showing how widespread Twitter users are.
• Only 19,754 of the tweets about Walmart � less than 13% � were in the top 25 cities, which likely reflects the large number of Walmart stores in rural areas.
• The hottest topic relating to Best Buy was the promotion with Nicki Minaj relating to her Pink Friday album; the second most popular was job postings.
• With regard to Target, the most popular was an often-retweeted joke from Gary Busey: "While you're all in line at Target at 4am, I'm gonna be robbing your houses to get my own #Blackfriday deals."
• The Macy's parade is still a huge crowd-pleaser and an important part of Thanksgiving for many people. The parade was the dominant theme of tweets, particularly in New York City, where Macy's received three times as many tweets as Walmart.
• RadioShack's #Shackfriday tag did not catch on with tweeters, and a number of people complained about a glitch in one of the company's Foursquare badges. But people were excited about buying Android products there.
• Sears being open on Thanksgiving was tweeted about a lot, as was their LG Cooking giveaway.
• Kohl's 3am opening on Black Friday was a popular topic of discussion, with some people saying it was crazy and others planning to be there. Kohl's use of Twitter to recruit for jobs was also a popular topic, and the joke "My family can't afford the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade so we're watching the Kohl's parade" was often retweeted.

The monitoring was accomplished using E.Life's social media and monitoring software, Tweetmeter. Tweetmeter tracks and stores all tweets that mention a specific brand or phrase. The software analyzes the tweets and provides 16 reports that help brand managers understand how consumers are engaging with their brand, determine the best ways to respond, and report on the success of their social media initiatives. The reports track phrases mentioned in conjunction with the brand, hashtags, positive vs. negative tweets, influencers, re-tweets, trends, and tweets by time of day. A free 14-day trial of Tweetmeter is available at www.elifemonitor.com.

About E.Life

E.Life (www.elifemonitor.com) is a social media monitoring and analysis vendor that provides social media marketing managers with the information they need to monitor, measure, and report on the success of their social media initiatives. The company's flagship product, Tweetmeter, monitors Twitter for tweets about a brand � or the brand's competitors � in any language and any country. Founded in 2004, the company is active in six countries, including the United States, Brazil, Germany and the United Kingdom.