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Walmart Tries to Emulate MySpace
mattsucks writes to tell us that according to AdAge, retail behemoth WalMart is trying desperately to target the MySpace demographic with a new, and highly sanitized, site designed to appeal to teens. From the article: "It's a quasi-social-networking site for teens designed to allow them to 'express their individuality,' yet it screens all content, tells parents their kids have joined and forbids users to e-mail one another. Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters' -- a twist on hipsters that proves just how painfully uncool it is to try to be cool."
I can't believe how naive these failed-meme-launching marketing execs keep proving themselves to be.
There are 95 million myspace users and every week another million sign up. There aren't enough additional people in the Internet-using public in america to even come close to competing with myspace. They'd be lucky to pick up a couple hundred thousand users. And why would you use this instead of myspace?
This isn't intended to compete with myspace. It's just another marketing disaster.
"You've just become a member of one of the coolest cliques on the net. Be sure to spam your friends...
Wait for the goatse... Meanwhile I'll be uploading random copyright infringing content via tor... This must be good for something.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The website, content and contest are just a marketing campaign and a pathetic one at that. Kids "customize" their page and upload pictures and video (pending approval from the Walmart mandarins, of course). The entire exercise is directed at getting kids to shop for their fall back to school wardrobe at Wally World as opposed to Target, who apparently have the budget teen fashion market pretty much buttoned up (no pun intended). It's not a blog or even a blog with training wheels, but just a way for kids to yap to their friends about this "cool new web site" and act as shills for Walmart.
from the FAQ:
WHO'S BEHIND THIS GENIUS WEB DESTINATION?
The guys from Wal-Mart and Sony® teamed up to bring you all the sweet stuff you'll find on the HUB!
'nuff said.
Good Lord, there has to be an end to this. Every company with an online frontend thinks they can create some kind of social-networking infrastructure to "draw the hip kids in" with. What a load of crap. Why would I join the walmart network to hook up with my friends and buy paper towels, when I'm already connected to 15 different networks. I already have too many to be on. Not to mention, I am sure a social network like myspace, whose sole purpose is to serve as a social network, is much better at performing that function than, say, Walmart is. Walmart sells me toothpaste at a discount, it doesn't connect me to my friends. And in case they haven't noticed, teenage girls aren't going to tell each other they shop at Walmart. There's a bit of a stigma attached to that. From what I hear, they all shop at Target, or "Tär-zhAy"
I wouldn't say that they're trying to rip off myspace. They're using the idea of MySpace to sell product. This is about marketing back-to-school clothes in an interactive quasi-social way. It's marketing. It's marketing. It's marketing. There is a video contest sponsored by sony. You're supposed to create a video for your page. The video is supposed to be an commercial showing you doing school "your way". That's the marketing slogan: School Your Way.
There is no social interactivity, as near as I can tell. No way to leave comments.
They're not trying to attract the hip kids, so much as they're trying to do a makeover on kids that would normally be shopping for their clothes at walmart. There going after the kids that want to be hip, but aren't. Not ever mall contains a hot topic. This isn't about kids being hip, this is about marketers trying to be hip, tryng to understand the MySpace phenom so they can sell it back to you.
A little Frank Zappa song would be apropos here.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Echoing SNL's insight that WalMart reversed its decision to sell birth control pills when it throught about who shops at WalMart, do we _really_ want people who would join this site uncensored and emailing each other?
Yea, I got that message too.
w nload.akamai.com/25623/theHub/multimedia/home_land ing.swf
So, out of curiosity, I peeked at their shockwave file:
http://a1.g.akamai.net/f/1/25623/1h/exxonmobil.do
exxonmobil?
Anyone who understands Akamai (better than I) feel up to explaining how that works? Shouldn't Wal Mart get their own subdomain walmart.download.akamai.com?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!