NEW YORK — Black Friday seemed a little less crazy this year.

There were squabbles here and there, and elbows got thrown, but the Friday morning crowds appeared smaller than usual and less frenzied, in part because many Americans took advantage of stores’ earlier opening hours to do their shopping on Thanksgiving Day.

That might be hard to stomach for people worried about commercial encroachment on Thanksgiving. But it is good news for bargain-hunters who hate crowds.

Whether it’s good news for retailers remains to be seen. Sales estimates for the start of the holiday shopping season will start trickling out later in the weekend.

Stores such as Wal-Mart and Target reported brisk Thanksgiving crowds. The colossal Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., said it drew 100,000 people between 5 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday, nearly what it draws over a typical full day.

On Friday, plenty of shoppers were out, but it wasn’t elbow-to-elbow, said Moody’s analyst Michael Zucchero, at a mall in northern Connecticut.

“Traffic seems a little light,” he said. “Stores being open last night takes away some of the early birds.”

Brooklyn residents Paul and Mary Phillips shopped at Target, Old Navy and Marshalls on Friday at the Atlantic Terminal Mall in New York City. They picked DVD box sets for $5, marked down from $45, and speakers for $19, down from $50. They didn’t even have to wait in line.

“Because stores were open on Thursday, they’re not as crowded now,” Paul Phillips said.

There were scattered reports of shopper scuffles and arrests. In addition, protests were planned nationwide over minimum-wage laws and the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri.

Other disruptions: Best Buy’s website went down on Friday morning for about an hour. Spokesman Jeff Shelman said “a concentrated spike in mobile traffic” prompted the company to temporarily shut down the site. Online monitoring firm Dynatrace said Cabela’s, Foot Locker and J.C. Penney also had website problems.