Guess what movie BoomTown is being force-marched to this weekend by the Swisher boys?

Not just “Gnomeo & Juliet,” but the debut of the Justin Bieber movie hagiography “Never Say Never” in 3-D is much on the list I was presented without any ability to negotiate terms.

Now I’m a BeLieber.

Oddly enough, I am looking forward to it, because it’s looks charming and has gotten some pretty good reviews. Also, there is the hair.

Enjoy one of the trailers–this one has gotten close to 150 million views on YouTube:

And if you guessed it was from all of those people putting up their unwanted presents on eBay, you are completely, 100 percent…wrong. Dec. 25 and 26 saw record mobile traffic to Zillow.

In general, mobile traffic to the real-estate site surges whenever people are out of the office. During the average weekday, Zillow says that only about 15 percent of traffic comes from mobile devices. On a typical weekend, anywhere from one-fifth to one quarter of Zillow’s traffic is from phones. On Thanksgiving, that figure reached 30 percent, while Christmas Day saw a record number of visits to the mobile site, with phones accounting for a third of all Zillow’s traffic.

As for eBay, it said Dec. 12 was its busiest mobile sales day ever, with the number of transactions well more than double that of the busiest day of 2009. That marked two years in a row that the second Sunday in December was the busiest eBay shopping day.

For those who want to slice eBay’s mobile business in all sorts of ways, the company has posted an interactive graphic with all sorts of fun facts. For instance, auto parts represented 15 percent of mobile sales in Germany as compared with only 8 percent in the U.S.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Sales of 1.7 million units in three days: That’s nearly double the number sold during the launch of the 3Gs and damn close to some of the more bullish first-weekend sales estimates. Makes you wonder how many units the company might have sold had supply not been constrained and had the still missing-in-action white iPhone 4 been available for purchase at launch.

An impressive showing, particularly considering that it took Apple 72 days to sell one million of the first iPhone in 2007.

Below, the official announcement:

iPhone 4 Sales Top 1.7 Million

Apple® today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone® 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime®, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple’s new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

According to Whitmore’s survey of 100 iPhone 4 retail outlets (Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, O2, Orange and Car-Phone stores in the U.S. and U.K.), 60 percent of Apple Stores were sold out by Thursday evening, as were 100 percent of retail-partner stores. Supplies were replenished overnight, but by end-of-day Friday, quite a few stores were reporting stock-outs. And that number only grew on Saturday.

“Our checks carried out on Saturday revealed that Apple retail stores which were stocked-out on Thursday/Friday were unable to replenish stocks with ~95 percent of stores contacted experiencing stock-out situations. Further, most Apple representatives were not certain about the iPhone 4 stock replenishments and comments such as ‘We’re out of stock’, ‘Don’t know when we will have them in store’, ‘We sold out just minutes ago’, ‘No, we don’t know when we will be getting the phone’ and ‘Your best bet is the online store’ were cited frequently,” Whitmore reported.

“In addition,” according to the analyst, “retail stores which had iPhones in-stock cited long lines (2 to 3 hours) outside the stores. Comments such as ‘We have very limited numbers, we should be sold out in a couple of hours’ and ‘Please give us a call just before you leave home to make sure the iPhones are in stock’ suggested waning inventory levels.”

Whitmore figures Apple (AAPL) sold more than one million iPhone 4s over the weekend, but notes that shipments could have been dramatically higher if there was more supply.

“While the strong start is encouraging, we believe the long-term opportunity for growth of the iPhone is even more significant as near-term shipments are being gated by supply constraints,” Whitmore wrote. “We estimate Apple to sell 44 million iPhones in CY10 (8.5 million in the June quarter) and 55 million in CY11.” (See chart below; click to enlarge.)

Which is not to say that Sacconaghi disputes the iPad’s potential as a market-defining device. He just wonders if there aren’t a bit too many unknowns at present to make hard and fast predictions about its sales trajectory.

“What will international pricing be?” Sacconaghi asks in a research note issued this morning. “What sort of media content will be available, and how quickly? How rapidly will Apple increase distribution beyond the 10 countries announced so far, compared to the iPhone which is available in 89 countries? How prevalent will non-Apple distribution be?”

Reasonable questions. And without answers to them, Sacconaghi is playing it safe with his sales estimates. He expects Apple (AAPL) to sell between 300,000 and 400,000 iPads over launch weekend–including pre-sales. But he figures the device will sell five million in its first full year at market and 6.8 million in fiscal year 2011.

“We note that the initial iPad launch will be a US only launch and will not include 3G models; we suspect that total (including pre-sales) first weekend sales will be slightly higher than the original iPhone’s first weekend (270K), given the iPhone had a similar price, and was US exclusive (although it did not offer pre-orders),” Sacconaghi writes.

“Our analysis suggests that iPhone sales run rates have fallen significantly (i.e., by a factor of 4x – 9x) following launch weekends; we think a drop-off in sales at the high end of this range is likely appropriate for the iPad, given that pre-sales will have boosted first weekend sales. Such a drop-off in iPad sales from our launch weekend forecast would result in unit sales for year 1 of about 5 million units in-line with our estimates.”

That might not be an “over-zealous” estimate in Sacconaghi’s eyes, but it’s certainly a bullish one. Still, the analyst concludes that the iPad’s near term financial implications for Apple may not prove to be as magical as investors hope.

“We believe that while the iPad may evolve meaningfully over time, we expect its impact on Apple’s earnings to be minimal during FY 10,” he says. “In the immediate term, iPad expectations appear over-zealous, which could provide a relative short-term disappointment for investors.”

FURTHER READING:

Launch Day iPads Sold Out

iPad Available at “Most Best Buy Stores” This Saturday

Apple Grabs iPad Trademark From Fujitsu

Apple Now Accepting iPad App Submissions

Early Supplies of iPad Accessories Dwindling?

Initial iPad Demand Greater Than Initial iPhone Demand

iPad TV?

Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-book?

Coming Soon From Apple: Big Touch?

iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

COMPLETE IPAD COVERAGE

Enter Dan Zarrella, a self-described “social media marketing & viral marketing scientist,” who has been doing some interesting research about the way Facebook users share Web links. Some of his findings, in ascending order of usefulness:

• Facebook users aren’t interested in sharing stories about Twitter.
• They are interested in sharing stories that have numbers in the titles.
• They’re most interested in sharing stories when they read them on the weekend.

It’s not surprising that people who use Facebook aren’t terribly interested in stories about Twitter–unlike Twitter-obsessed Twitter users. And there’s not much a publisher can do with that info. The fact that people like numbers and lists is behind a magazine trick the Web has already embraced wholeheartedly.

Zarrella’s research about weekend posts, though, is worth chewing on for a second. He suggests that Facebook users are more likely to share stuff on weekends because they lack time to get on the site during the work week.

But if that were the case, you’d figure Facebook would have a well-documented usage drop from Monday through Friday. And if someone’s reported on that, I haven’t seen it.

Here’s a guess I can’t back up with numbers: Maybe people are more apt to share stuff on the weekends because they’ve got more time to read.

In any event, Zarrella’s advice to post items on the weekend is sensible, but limited–there aren’t a lot of Web publishers who can take a pass on five days each week.

The movie, an over-the-top retelling of World War II featuring a squad of Jewish Nazi hunters, brought in $37 million at the box office this weekend, which is about $10 million more than the Hollywood prognostication machine expected.

In the old days, you’d simply chalk up the difference to the fact that the Hollywood prognostication machine sometimes gets things wrong. But now when this happens, the impulse is to blame or praise Twitter. The theory: Audiences go to see the movie on Friday, then quickly tweet their 140-character reviews to their pals. This either keeps moviegoers away for the rest of the weekend or makes them flock to the theaters.

All of this sounds believable enough, but I have yet to see anyone spell out exactly how it works. The Hollywood Reporter, for instance, is a big proponent of the “Twitter saved Tarantino” theory. But its evidence is awfully weak: It just notes that some Twitter messages about the film have been positive.

At least NewTeeVee tries to put some numbers behind the argument. Using data from tracking service Trendrr, it notes that the volume of Tweets about the film increased over the weekend (see chart; click to enlarge).

Of course, volume alone doesn’t indicate anything: For all we know the messages were fixated on the mustache Brad Pitt’s character sports in the film. And in any case, we’re a long way from correlating Internet messages with real-world actions–just ask former presidential candidate Ron Paul’s ardent cyberfans.

But marketing always involves at least an equal part art for every part science, and when you add a superhyped, very new phenomenon like Twitter to the mix, all bets are off. Given the way these things work, expect Hollywood to assume that Twitter can now make or break a movie. And there will be an opportunistic flock of “social media” gurus ready to assure them–for just a small monthly retainer–that their insight is correct.

In case you haven’t seen it (left unmentioned in these reports is the fact that the movie got a very big conventional marketing push), here is an “Inglourious Basterds” trailer. And below that, one of my favorite scenes from “Pulp Fiction,” Tarantino’s 1994 breakthrough. (Be warned! These are Tarantino movies, and the second clip is unedited, which means you’re going to get some potentially NSFW cursing and gore. Enjoy!)

My time-killing suggestion for the day: AdWeek’s “AdFreak” blog, which is packed with TV ads you probably haven’t seen. Did you know, for instance, that the Kool-Aid man was back?

Or perhaps you’ve wondered what a North Korean beer ad looks like (though honestly, you don’t need to go the full two-and-a-half minutes on this one; 20 seconds is fine):

Or maybe you want to see a guy doing a backflip in a wheelchair, as in this spot for Howstuffworks.com:

One word of warning: Don’t bother with the “Eat Canadian” ad, which is earnest and dull. Save that for Monday, as you’re easing into the week. Enjoy your weekend!