janel klein is live in new york city with the latest on shopping's big day. good morning, janel. >> reporter: good morning. it's amazing to see how many people are done shopping this year. that's really the trend that we're seeing on this black friday. this stores open for the first time yesterday. some as early as 9:00 p.m. that's one way they're upping the competition. they're not only hoping people will come to the malls, they're also hoping they will get them online. cyber shopping is a big trend we've seen the last several years. this year the new battle ground is mobile sites. a lot of stores offering special deals only available on their mobile sites, and they are sent to your smart phone. some are getting so aggressive they'll sending deals to people when they think they'll be in line checking out at a competitor's store. they hope those people will get the deals own their smart phones, leave the checkout line and come to their store instead. sew it is aggressive. there is backlash to this. with people saying that black friday shopping. starting onli

nbc's janell klein is live for us in new york city. janelle, how does it look out there now? >> reporter: it's busy, lynn. in fact, many shoppers went right from thanksgiving dinner straight to the mall this year. for the first time, dozens of stores opened last night. one sign that the competition to lure black friday shoppers is more intense than ever. the bargains are on, and so is the bedlam. one in four americans are shopping today, with high stakes and low prices. >> black friday is the beginning of the season. it's a huge day across the country. and for many retailers, they are the best deals that consumers are going to get. >> reporter: and some of the deals are starting earlier than ever. many big chains opened today at midnight. >> people don't have to go to sleep and get up early. they can stay up all night long and shop. >> reporter: but the sales aren't just in stores, a third of americans will buy online this season. and smartphones are the new buying battle ground. some companies like amazon and walgreen's have special deals targeting shoppers on their phones e

in new york, janelle klein, nbc news. >>> san francisco is normally a scene of black friday shopping chaos. today, the chaos got turned up a couple knoches. several dozen members of the occupy movement marched around the scaquare today closing stres and snarl iing traffic. as stun shoppers looked on, police briefly clashed with protesters to open the road. the busy shopping district was the perfect place to deliver their anti-corporate message. >> we have a great group of people here, captive audience by the stores and getting our signal out and trying to remind them, we're trying to make this society more equitable. >> along with the occupy movement, san francisco was the site of an anti-war movement and anti-fur demonstration. >>> a small group of occupy san jose protesters gathered near the mall to get their voices heard. the demonstration was to show support for the 99% and speak out against big banks. >> we need to get the 99% to come together and to take a stand against the 1%. the 1%, the banks are destroying our country. we have 14 million people unemployed in america today,

nbc's janel klein is in new york city for us this morning. janel, these people are like late to the game, at 5:00 in the morning. it's like, you know, people have been out there for hours. >> reporter: they're pretty serious about this, lynn, and like you said, a lot of stores opening last night, so many people went straight from thanksgiving dinner right to the shopping mall. many stores doing this for the very first time, and that is just one sign that the rush to lure black friday shoppers is more intense than ever. bargains are on, and so is the bedlam. one in four americans are shopping today with high stakes and low prices. >> black friday is the beginning of the season, it's a huge day across the country. and for many retailers, they are the best deals that consumers are going to get. >> reporter: and some of those deals are starting earlier than ever. many big chains opened today at midnight. >> people don't have to go to sleep and wake up early. they can just stay up all night long and shop. >> reporter: but the sales aren't just in s

janel klein at the manhattan mall in new york city. you've been there most of the day.s you might expect for black friday. but i think that definitely it was a lot different this morning during those door busters than it is now. by which i mean to say a lot of people are coming out early, early this morning, some stores as you know opened earlier than ever, as early as 9:00 p.m. last night and shoppers wanted to take advantage of those deals. they knew these were some of the best prices they would probably see on some of these items all year round. so despite the economy that everyone's keeping a close eye on, they wanted to take advantage of those prices. now we are seeing people still coming out. you can see there are still big crowds here. however, people are maybe buying a little bit less. they're probably spending a little bit more carefully because those prices are very good are not the record-setting prices and sales that they saw this morning during that door buster period. that, of course, as we're hearing was one of the strategies the retailers were using this