The biggest shopping day of the year happened while you were sleeping.

Nov. 11 — the 11th day of the 11th month — is fondly known as Singles Day, and it's bigger than both Black Friday and Cyber Monday in terms of the number of people participating.

Singles Day is largely celebrated in China as an unofficial anti-Valentines day that morphed into a massive discount shopping opportunity where an estimated 270 million consumers take to the internet to make their purchases. Even before Americans ate their breakfast, Alibaba, the largest e-commerce company in the world, boasted $8.16 billion in sales. Alibaba earned more in the first hour of Singles Day sales than Americans’ total spending during last year’s Cyber Monday.

Spending on Singles Day has tripled in the past few years, and not by accident. Alibaba has been promoting Singles Day sales with viral videos and offering perks like free mobile data so that customers can spend even more time shopping. Amazon even launched Amazon China to get in on the action, but the company has a long ways to go to be able to compete with Alibaba in one of the world's fastest growing markets.