Walmart Reenters Social Media Arena

Walmart will acquire Kosmix, the Mountain View, CA developer of a social media technology platform that filters and organizes content in social networks to connect people with real-time information that matters to them. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Kosmix founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman will operate as part of the newly-formed @WalmartLabs, based in Silicon Valley. Walmart plans to expand the @WalmartLabs team and expects the new group to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce that will support Walmart’s global multichannel strategy, blurring the line between bricks-and-mortar stores and e-commerce.


Kosmix’s sites include TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events; Kosmix.com, a site to discover content by topic, and RightHealth, which, according to the company, is one of the top three health and medical information sites by global reach. The three properties in March together attracted more than 17.5 million unique visitors worldwide, Kosmix said. As for whether the retail giant will use the three Kosmix sites, a Walmart spokesman said, “We haven’t made a determination about that at this time.”

Wal-Mart’s earlier forays into social media were less than home runs. Its Walmarting Across America blog in 2006, about two Wal-Mart enthusiasts traveling around the U.S. in an RV, was revealed to be less than authentic when it was learned that Wal-Mart paid for the flights, the RV and the gas of the two protagonists. “The Hub,” a MySpace-like clone, closed in October 2006, just 10 weeks after it launched, while a Walmart sponsored Facebook group reportedly had lackluster results.