Smartphones, tablets spark “post-pie” Thanksgiving sales

(Reuters) – Retailers are targeting “post-pie” commerce, the jump in shopping created by the boom in smartphones and tablet computers which Thanksgiving diners grab as they collapse onto the couch after eating turkey and pumpkin pie.

While people relax with family and friends or watch football on TV, they are increasingly shopping online with these mobile gadgets, creating a surge in traffic and purchases that retailers are beginning to target for the first time this year.

“This is a new shoppable moment,” said Steve Yankovich, who heads the mobile business of eBay Inc, operator of the largest online marketplace.

Before the rise of smartphones and tablets, it was socially unacceptable to pull out a laptop after Thanksgiving dinner, or head to a home office to fire up a desktop computer, Yankovich explained.

“With a tablet or smartphone you don’t get that reaction,” he added.

EBay recently surveyed more than 1,000 shoppers in the United States about their holiday shopping plans. Almost two thirds said holiday sales should begin after Thanksgiving dinner and respondents said their meals would end, on average, at 5:23 p.m. EST.

Based on that feedback, eBay plans to launch 20 mobile-only deals through its eBay Mobile application at 5:23 p.m. EST this Thanksgiving. The company plans 20 more at 5:23 p.m. PST for West Coast shoppers.

Other retailers including Toys “R” Us, HSN Inc, Rue La La and ideeli are also targeting mobile shoppers this Thanksgiving in the evening.

“The iPad holiday sales season starts at the point of indigestion while you’re sitting on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner,” said Ben Fischman, chief executive of Rue La La, which specializes in online limited-time fashion sales events known as flash sales.

Post-pie commerce is the latest example of how mobile devices, in particular Apple Inc’s iPad and iPhone, are changing consumer behavior and forcing retailers to adapt quickly.

The holiday shopping season traditionally kicks off with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers use a day off from work to head to stores.

The following Monday became a big online shopping day known as Cyber Monday because people returned to the office and shopped using their office computers.

Now Thanksgiving is emerging as a big new shopping day online. The value of e-commerce transactions on Turkey Day has surged 128 percent to $ 479 million over the past five years, outpacing the growth of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other big holiday shopping days, according to comScore Inc.

That’s a far cry from the $ 1.25 billion spent online on Cyber Monday last year, but the growth has caught retailers’ attention.

“It’s still a smaller day, but it is growing much faster,” said Andrew Lipsman of comScore. “We’re seeing a lot more talk about Thanksgiving becoming a more important shopping day.”

Several big retailers, including Target Corp, are opening physical stores on Thanksgiving to make sure they don’t lose sales to online rivals.

“Consumers that would rather shop than watch 12 hours of football on Thanksgiving Day should be given the chance to shop,” Marshal Cohen of The NPD Group wrote in a blog on Thursday. “If online is open, why should brick-and-mortar close just to give away those precious shopping hours to the competition?”

Thanksgiving evening is where the action is online. By 3 p.m. EST last year online sales were up about 20 percent compared to the same period in 2010, according to IBM Software Group, a unit of International Business Machines Corp.

But by midnight PST on Thanksgiving 2011, online sales were up 39 percent versus the same period the previous year, IBM data show. Overall, November 2011 online sales rose 15.6 percent compared to the year-earlier period.

“Post-pie shopping this year will be fueled mostly by tablet shoppers, especially iPad users,” said Jay Henderson, global strategy director for IBM’s enterprise marketing management business.

In September and October, the iPad accounted for at least 7.5 percent of all traffic to retailers’ websites, beating out the iPhone with about 6 percent and Android devices at just over 4 percent, IBM data show.

“This is the first time the iPad has shown sustained leadership over all other mobile devices,” Henderson said.

Last Thanksgiving, retailers were surprised by the surge in tablet traffic in the evening. They also did not expect the devices would be used to complete so many purchases, instead expecting them to be browsing devices mostly, according to Steve Tack, chief technology officer for APM Solutions, a unit of Compuware Corp.

“Tablet users are not waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to purchase, they are doing it on Thursday night on the couch in front of the game,” he said. “This is a significant new shopping event.”

This year, retailers are more prepared, he added.

Rue La La will launch an online boutique called “The Holiday Dash” at 8 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving, “specifically to go after the shopper who will be sitting at home after dinner on the couch,” CEO Fischman said.

More than half of Rue La La‘s sales over Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the following weekend will come from mobile devices. Half of those mobile purchases will be on an iPad, he said.

Fischman said the conversion rate on an iPad is close to double the conversion rate on a smart phone, meaning shoppers are more than twice as likely to purchase using the tablet device.

“The tablet offers the luxury of a larger screen with the convenience and portability of the phone,” Fischman said. “It’s the killer e-commerce device.”

Ideeli, a rival to Rue La La, plans a “Think Fast” online sales event at 6 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving to target tablet shoppers. Ideeli usually runs sales at noon every day.

Toys “R” Us, the largest toy retailer, launched a new tablet-optimized website on Tuesday and the company plans to make all its Black Friday deals available online at 8 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving.

HSN, which runs the Home Shopping Network and has traditionally focused on TV sales, on Tuesday unveiled an online holiday gift guide designed for tablet shoppers.

The company plans to send discounted deals to mobile shoppers on Thanksgiving.

“When people are done with the holiday meal and go back into the screen world, we will have great products on sale,” said Jill Braff, executive vice president of Digital Commerce at HSN.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Parker Posey Interview Price Check

For the last two decades, Parker Posey has been bringing audiences to their knees so quickly, you'd think Darla just shouted, "Air Raid!" Seamlessly segueing between indie cinema and popcorn fare (not to mention jumping from film to television and back again), the actress has established herself as one of the most versatile, gifted and beguiling in the biz.

Posey's latest film, the biting Price Check, casts her as Susan Felders, the newly appointed head of pricing and marketing for a supermarket franchise tasked with salvaging a failing chain. But things don't go exactly as planned for Susan, the company or its employees. Thankfully, Posey's professional plan is firing on all cylinders as ETonline discovered upon sitting down with the in-demand actress.

ETonline: What attracted you to Price Check?
Parker Posey: It's about something. It's like an old school movie -- like In the Company of Men or Clockwatchers -- about office politics and where we're at right now as a country. Peter (played by Eric Mabius) was this music guy who was totally cool, but look what happened to the music industry and where he is now. It was a well-written script about a world I had never seen before, and not a lot of those movies are being financed right now. Everything gets made as a result of concept or a one-line pitch.

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ETonline: So many of your films are hard to summarize, which is a compliment. Do you find yourself less attracted to films you can boil down to a single sentence?
Posey: Absolutely. These are the projects where you don't just have characters who are "good" or "bad." They have different elements in all of them; that's my favorite kind of thing to play and I'm still doing it after all these years.

ETonline: What appealed to you about Susan?
Posey: I connected to her. I feel connected and safe with good material. If I don't see the material on the page, but still get the job, I kind of make up the material myself to bring in something that will make it more real for me. I always want to give someone a heart and a soul. I think, What is the place a person wants to achieve from? With Price Check, that's the scene between Susan and her boss before she throws herself on the floor. You see how much she cares. Where does a strong female come from? What gives them that engine to keep trying?

ETonline: You also have a unique gift for making the audience empathize with less than compassionate characters. For example, in Scream 3, Jennifer Jolie was the only one I wanted to live. Is that what it;s about for you; avoiding archetypes and being your own type?
Posey: Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't say it's easy to play unlikeable characters, but I think people in powerful positions can have psychopathic tendencies and people are seduced by that. Someone like Jennifer, OK, she's an actress playing Gale in the movie Stab. How do people in horror films stay in horror films? They have to be out of their minds. So I started thinking about this idea of an overworked actress who was being destructive without realizing it because she wouldn't leave. That was my corny backstory with Jennifer. And she was so fun. Wes [Craven, director] let me get away with some stuff that I was really surprised by. I mean, I thought he didn't see some of what I was doing because he kept it in [laughs].

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ETonline: You've also done a lot of television work lately, on Louie, The Good Wife and New Girl. Would you be open to headlining your own show again?
Posey: I think TV is at a point right now where the people on the business side are becoming more open to self-creators. Places like HBO are doing internet branches of their company. The business is changing, the model is changing and that's good because I think the form needs to change. I love what the writers of Breaking Bad and Homeland are doing, and what Lena Dunham and Louis C.K. are doing with comedic shows about their psyche. I think my interests lie in great writing, and I'm talking to David O. Russell about an idea we have called This Family, which would be a collective of playwrights and actors. When the voice of the writer is compromised by advertisers coming in every 7 minutes or 14 minutes ... it's been such a long time of them creating what TV can be and it's exciting to see the artists taking back control.

Price Check is now available on iTunes.

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CNBC laying off handful of staffers

CNBC is laying off a handful of staffers today, according to sources close to the network. The pink slips are part of a company-wide mandate to cut 450 positions across NBCUniversal.

A spokesman had no immediate comment.

The positions are believed to be low-level and number less than 10. The changes come as NBC News Chair Patricia Fili-Krushel makes her mark in the news division.

Fili-Krushel’s appointment prompted a shake-up at the “Today” show, which lost executive producer Jim Bell this week after seven years on the show. Bell is moving over to a top role at the NBC Olympics division.

Fili-Krushel told the Wall Street Journal that the show needs to evolve. She appeared to suggest that the hugely profitable morning show which spans four hours needs to pick up the pace: “People wake up with their smartphones; that’s their alarm, so when you are presenting the ‘Today’ show, we have to keep that in mind.”

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Jolly holiday shopping season already under way

Lilian Stoppa and Renata Rosa stepped out of Target in Midtown Miami with a cart piled high with holiday gifts.

Landing in Miami on Thursday morning for a five-day shopping spree, they already had spent $800 by mid-afternoon on presents for family members: toys for Rosa’s daughter, beauty items for Stoppa’s mother, plus lots of other stuff.

“This is just the start,” giggled Stoppa, 30, who works with Rosa, also 30, at a Sao Paulo telecom company. Their next stops: Sawgrass Mills, Aventura Mall and Bal Harbour Shops, if their money holds out. “We came to Miami to shop because it’s very much cheaper than in Brazil.”

Tourists like Stoppa and Rosa are exactly the reason retail experts predict Florida’s holiday shopping season will be the best since the recession.

The Florida Retail Federation forecasts that Florida will see a 5.2 percent jump in holiday spending from $55 billion in 2011 to $58 billion this year, marking the highest percentage increase predicted since the economic slump began.

“All of the indicators point to what we believe will be a very robust holiday shopping season,” said Florida Retail Federation President and Chief Executive Rick McAllister.

That also translates into more than 42,000 new retail jobs, he said.

Buoyed in large part by tourists and snowbirds, Florida is expected to outpace the nation in spending for the holiday season, as it did before the recession.

This year, the National Retail Federation is predicting holiday spending nationwide to rise 4.1 percent. On average, consumers are expected to spend about $750 each.

Economists point to strong consumer confidence as a major factor contributing to a stronger shopping season.

“By and large the consumer is very confident right now, and that usually leads to spending,” McAllister said.

Other indicators also point to a healthy season. ICSC this week released its ICSC-Goldman Sachs 2012 Holiday Spending Intentions Survey, which found that 19 percent of consumers plan to spend more, and 5 percent substantially more, on holiday gifts this year versus last year. It was the highest percentage of consumers reporting they intend to increase spending over the previous holiday season since ICSC began asking the question in 2004.

Many stores are getting a head start on the holidays. Sales are underway everywhere from Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, to Macy’s, Toys“R”Us and Anthropologie.

Retailers like West Elm are beckoning gift givers. Stores are decked out with sparkly, eye-catching displays of items like candlesticks, ornaments and crystal paperweights.

“We’ve had lots of people shopping early, for several weeks,” said Ana Meza, an assistant manager at West Elm in Midtown Miami.

Without question, the holiday season is critical for retailers, a period when they typically generate 20 percent to 40 percent of the full year’s revenue.

This year brings an added bonus. With Thanksgiving falling early, the shopping season is stretched to 32 days, giving retailers more valuable time to rack up sales.

Shoppers like Jose Hernandez aren’t waiting for the last minute. Hernandez, who works as a supervisor at the Seabee base in Gulfport, Miss., and spends every other three months home in Miami, started his holiday shopping this week. He figures he spent $2,000 at Carter’s, GUESS, Marshalls and Target in Midtown, and plans to spend a total of $5,000 — up 40 percent from last year — before Christmas Day.

“The economy is going up,” said Hernandez, 44.

Yet experts say that many holiday revelers will avoid the stores all together, opting instead for online purchases.

Retail experts expect e-commerce to continue to post a dramatic increase this holiday season, up 15 percent. Though it still represents only about 5 percent of all shopping, online buying is the fastest-growing segment of the retail industry, McAllister said.

Many online-only sites are offering percentage discounts starting this weekend. Disney Store will offer a selection of “Magical Friday” deals on sale beginning Monday, at DisneyStore.com. Kohl’s is letting customers shop more than 500 “Early Bird specials” on Kohls.com starting Wednesday.

While apparel is expected to be the top category for purchases, gift cards are again projected to outsell any single article of merchandise.

“Gift cards are the best invention ever,” said Jennifer Mayer, 44, a drug representative who has three daughters and lives in Miami Beach. “It’s not for everyone, but it’s great for those you don’t intimately know.”

This year, Mayer plans to buy gift cards at places like Starbucks, H&M, Forever 21 and Barnes & Noble.

“They’re great for bosses. They’re great for teenagers,” she said. “They’re a lifesaver.”

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Miami City Commission slams administration over surprise $45 million budget surplus

Union leaders asked the city of Miami to reopen contract negotiations Thursday, one day after the city’s budget team announced it had discovered a surprise $45 million surplus.

“You told us to dig into our pockets and we did — for four consecutive years,” Fraternal Order of Police Vice President Javier Ortiz told the city commission, noting that the unions had agreed to millions in employee concessions because the city was projecting a $40 million budget shortfall.

“Now that apparently times are good and we have $45 million, direct the manager to meet with us and reopen our contracts,” Ortiz said.

Mayor Tomás Regalado said he wants City Manager Johnny Martinez to sit down with the unions after Thanksgiving.

“Maybe we can use a little of the money to buy new uniforms or police cars or fire trucks,” Regalado said. “But to say that we are going to restore every concession, to me, that would be irresponsible.”

City administrators are recommending that the bulk of the surplus be stashed in reserves, which remain below the $93 million balance required by a city ordinance.

“Most of this [surplus] money is not recurring,” Regalado said. “If we were to use that money for raises and benefit, we will fall into the same downward spiral that the city was in many years ago.”

While commissioners said they were pleased to have more money than was projected, they did not give the administration a pass for dramatically underestimating the final balance for the past fiscal year. Budget Director Danny Alfonso had initially forecast a budget surplus of $8.5 million.

“I feel like I’ve been played,” Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones said. “How do you all of a sudden find $45 million?”

Spence-Jones said budget and finance officials should have said something over the summer when city leaders were negotiating employee concessions to balance the budget. She stormed off the dais after making her comments.

Alfonso took responsibility for the change in numbers, saying he had been too conservative with his revenue and expense projections.

“In my heart, there was no attempt to deceive anyone,” he told the commission.

Alfonso said the budget surplus was more likely to be around $37 million after several final transactions posted.

Martinez, the city manager, conceded that the administration “could have managed expectations a little better.”

“There was no plot,” he said. “Maybe we were not at our best with our projections, but there was no attempt to defraud or mislead anybody.”

Regalado said he did not expect anyone to be fired for the mistake.

“I stand 100 percent behind Danny Alfonso and the way that he runs his department,” he said. “I stand behind the manager. He is doing the right thing.”

The surplus will likely come up again later in the meeting, when the commission discusses a proposed $45 million bond issue. The money is needed to pay off a short-term loan that financed Miami’s share of the PortMiami tunnel dig.

Commissioner Frank Carollo said he wants to know how the surplus will affect the bond offering.

In other business, the commission extended the agreement that allows Scotty’s Landing restaurant and Grove Key Marina to operate on city-owned property in Coconut Grove.

The 35-year lease for the eatery and marina expired earlier this year, and the city sought proposals from businesses interested in taking over. But administrators halted the bid process in July, citing procedural irregularities.

“The reason why we’re here is because there was a disastrous process that ensued,” Commission Chairman Francis Suarez said.

Director of Public Facilities Henry Torre said he plans to get started on a new bid process later this month. Because the property sits on the waterfront, any new contract must be approved by public referendum.

Until then, Scotty’s Landing and Grove Key Marina will be able to operate under an agreement that can be revoked for any reason with 30 days notice.

The commission approved the agreement 4-1, with Carollo voting in opposition.

Vice Chairman Marc Sarnoff, whose district includes the Grove, urged city administrators to move forward with the new bid process as quickly as possible.

“I can foresee no set of circumstances, unless it is Hurricane Sandy reemerging, for me to kick this can down the road, and I am going to hold this administration responsible,” Sarnoff said. “Now it’s time to get this done.”

The deal has been particularly controversial because $2.5 million in back property taxes are owed on the site. Both Scotty’s Landing and the city of Miami have refused to pay. The business owner says his lease exempts him from property taxes.

The Miami-Dade tax collector had initially planned to go after the restaurant and marina. But the collector is now asking a judge to decide if the city or the restaurant is responsible.

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Adorable Tots: Celebs and their Cute Kids!

Tamera Mowry

The proud first-time mom just gave birth to son Aden John on November 12, 2012. Foregoing the magazine cover route, Tamera debuted her newborn on Twitter, captioning the photo, "Chillin with my grandma Darlene today! She hooked me up with a cool outfit!"

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Jose Ramos, former suspect in Patz murder, ordered to stand trial for 'misleading' cops

DALLAS, Pa. — The man long suspected in the 1979 disappearance of a New York City boy was ordered to stand trial Thursday for allegedly misleading police about where he planned to live after his release from prison on child molestation charges.

Jose Antonio Ramos, sporting a long white beard and ponytail, said nothing as he was led into a district judge's office in northeastern Pennsylvania a day after another man was charged with kidnapping and killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz.

Ramos, 69, was the prime suspect in Patz's disappearance until earlier this year, when a New Jersey man told police he'd choked the boy to death in the basement below a convenience store. Ramos was even declared legally responsible for the boy's death by a civil court in 2004.

Christopher Sadowski

Jose Ramos

Brian O'Dwyer, who represents Patz's family in their civil suit against Ramos, said he remains convinced of Ramos' guilt.

"Nothing has changed my mind that Jose Ramos is responsible for the abduction and murder of Etan Patz," O'Dwyer said in a statement Thursday.

Ramos completed a 27-year sentence last week but was immediately arrested upon his release from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas because authorities said he had given them a fake address for where he'd be living.

When New York City police checked out the Bronx address he provided on his Megan's Law registration form, they found no one living there who knew Ramos. And when police tracked down the cousin whose name Ramos had listed, she told them she hadn't had any contact with him in 35 years and did not plan to allow him to live with her, New York police Detective James Menton testified Thursday.

Ramos actually was making other arrangements, authorities said.

Letters intercepted by prison officials indicate that Ramos was planning to stay in a New York City hotel with a woman and her grandson, then head to Florida or Brazil, according to testimony.

"He had no intention whatsoever of even going to that building," Pennsylvania State police Trooper Martin Connors testified, adding that Megan's Law required Ramos to "have the ability to live at the address he provides."

In a strange twist, police also found no evidence the grandson claimed by Ramos' pen pal even existed.

Ramos' relationship with the woman, Janet Hicks, was unclear, and authorities aren't sure why she falsely claimed to Ramos that she would bring a boy to live with them. Hicks didn't return a phone message left by The Associated Press.

Police "really looked into that because they wanted to make sure that no other kid would be harmed by this man," but "we weren't able to establish that there was a grandson," Luzerne County prosecutor Lexie Falvello said outside court. "I think one can infer that he had questionable intentions, if he was making arrangements with a woman and requesting that she bring her grandson along with her, especially given his history."

Ramos' public defender, Jonathan Blum, argued for a dismissal of the felony charge, saying that Ramos could have headed to the address he gave police, found out he wasn't permitted to live there, then given police another address and still be in compliance with Megan's Law. But Judge James Tupper said Ramos' jailhouse letters provided evidence of criminal intent to mislead authorities.

After Tupper ordered Ramos to stand trial, Blum tried for a bail reduction — and provided a post office box in Reno, Nev., as the address Ramos would use should he make bail. Tupper kept bail at $75,000 and told Blum he would need to ask the trial court for a reduction.

Around the time of Ramos' hearing, the man now charged in Patz's death appeared in a New York City courtroom. Pedro Hernandez's attorney said his client is mentally ill and made a false confession.

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Cruise industry groups announce new safety measures

Two cruise industry groups announced a slew of new safety policies Thursday, the latest measures to come out of a major review launched after the Costa Concordia shipwreck in January.

The new policies, announced by the Cruise Lines International Association and European Cruise Council, focus on lifejacket storage, stability of heavy objects and operating procedures in the bridge area.

A significant change, which applies only to new cruise ships for which a contract is placed on or after July 1, 2013, requires lifejackets to be stowed near muster stations or lifeboats so they would be easily accessible in case of emergency. CLIA public affairs director David Peikin said most cruise lines have kept lifejackets in passenger rooms in the past.

Cruise lines must also ensure there is a way to secure heavy items such as pianos, treadmills or televisions at all times, when they’re not being used or in case of severe weather to guard against injury. Most ships had elements of the policy in place, Peikin said.

Finally, the industry has adopted a policy of putting into place consistent operating procedures on the bridge between ships on different brands owned by the same company. For example, a bridge team member rotating from Holland America Line to Princess Cruises, both owned by Carnival Corp., should find consistent bridge procedures on the two brands.

Peikin said cruise lines are in the process now of implementing the bridge procedure and heavy object policies.

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Service dogs help military veterans with injuries seen and unseen

As Diego Hurtado gently toyed with his dog’s ear, he recalled jumping out of a plane at 2,000 feet, then freefalling when his parachute failed to open.

He tightly held the dog’s ear in his palm as he recalled the mid-air collision of two aircraft at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, that spilled fuel and debris on the base, killing 24 fellow paratroopers and injuring countless others.

Hurtado’s dog Rex, a nearly 80-pound yellow Labrador-golden retriever mix, may seem like any other four-legged canine.

But Rex, 3, is also a service dog trained to help Hurtado cope with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as with the service-related physical injuries.

“With Rex I have been able to reduce my anti-depressants by more than half,” said Hurtado, 51, a sergeant first class who served in the Army for 20 years. “I am able to go to a lot of places I was not able to go to at all.”

Like many other veterans who struggle with PTSD and physical injuries, Hurtado turned to man’s best friend for help. Nonprofit organizations across the country provide dogs to veterans to help servicemen and servicewomen cope with their injuries, both physical and emotional.

Kendall resident Jose Moran received his German shepherd, Jana, from the same organization as Hurtado: New York-based America’s VetDogs.

Coral Springs resident and Iraq war veteran Moises Castro turned to Florida-based Dogs 4 Disabled Veterans for his pit-boxer mix, Salsa.

Both organizations train the dogs to match the personality and needs of each veteran and provide the dogs for free.

Castro, 47, served in Kuwait during the Iraq War as a U.S. Navy petty officer second-class. Once he came back, his anxiety, due to PTSD, was high, especially when he would go into crowds. To add to that, in 2010 he had a brain tumor removed, leaving him with sporadic seizures.

For two years, he barely left his home.

Then along came 2-year-old Salsa with white paws.

She has been trained to sense when Castro is about to get a seizure.

“She just knows it before I do,” he said, adding that during a seizure she licks his face to comfort him.

And when the two enter a big crowd that may induce anxiety, she veers him away.

“Then she keeps looking at me to make sure everything is OK,” said Castro. “She has given my freedom back to me.”

During Moran’s service in the U.S. Army as a sergeant first class, his vehicle ran over an explosive device in Sadr City, Iraq, a suburb of Baghdad The impact crushed one of the disks in his spine and his left knee.

“I don’t really remember too much,” said Moran, 45. “I heard a pop and I was out.”

After returning to South Florida, it was not easy to return to civilian life. Sometimes he did not eat for a week because his PTSD caused him so much anxiety in crowds that he avoided going to the grocery store.

“It got pretty bad there for awhile,” he said. “As bad as you can get without crossing the line.”

Three years ago he got Jana, who has been trained to sense Moran’s anxiety levels and knows when the two are about to walk into an uncomfortable situation.

“She can tell if someone is going to annoy me,” said Moran.

On a recent visit to the Miami VA, a man got in the elevator with the two. He “was just loud” and asked a lot of question about Jana, Moran said.

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Facebook jumps on biggest lock-up expiration day

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook‘s stock is up more than 7 percent despite expectations that it would fall because more than 850 million additional shares in the company are being freed up for sale.

Shares of Facebook Inc. are up $ 1.48, or 7.5 percent, at $ 21.34. Facebook went public in May at $ 38 in a much-hyped initial public offering of stock that turned out to be a letdown for investors. Its stock price hasn’t hit $ 38 since.

Wednesday marked the expiration of Facebook’s biggest lock-up period, which is a time following an IPO that prevents insiders from selling stock. In all, 773 million shares became eligible for sale, along with 31 million restricted stock units. And about 48 million shares held by former Facebook employees also became eligible for sale, bringing the total to 852 million. These shares would be on top of what’s already been available for trading, increasing the supply and potentially lowering the overall price.

Lock-ups are common after initial public stock offerings and are designed to prevent a stock from experiencing the kind of volatility that might occur if too many shareholders decide to sell all at once.

The previous lock-up expired on Oct. 29, when U.S. stock markets were closed because of Superstorm Sandy. Facebook’s stock fell nearly 4 percent two days later, when the stock market reopened.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali believes a potential increase in the capital gains tax on Jan. 1, when Bush-era tax cuts would expire unless Congress acts, could pressure Facebook’s stock. That said, he called the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social media company a “long-term winner.”

Facebook’s stock saw its biggest one-day gain on Oct. 24, the day after the company reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter results and detailed for the first time how much money it made from mobile ads. The stock, which added 19 percent that day, closed at $ 23.23. Even with Wednesday’s gain, it is still 8 percent below that price.

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