Black Friday: Bargain hunters from Facebook event crash Lowe's site

A virtual Black Friday stampede of bargain hunters overwhelmed Lowe's web site early this morning when the home-improvement retailer kicked off its holiday shopping sneak peek on Facebook.

The social media promotion started one minute after midnight Friday and featured videos with a limited number of coupon codes that could be used online for as much as 90% off some merchandise. Comments from shoppers on Lowe's Facebook page talked about how users put the items in their shopping carts, started the checkout process using the coupon codes -- and got the discount -- but when the site crashed, their shopping carts reset -- either at the original price or were cleared. In some cases, the user appeared to still have the discount, but it was gone after the checkout was complete.