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."

Actually..

[vix86]

Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters' -- a twist on hipsters

Actually I don't think of "hip" when I hear that name. If you ask me they got the name from "hub" as in a center point for many connections and a way for directing connections out in other directions. Which makes sense for a social networking site, but the fact that Wal-Mart isn't allowing users to contact each other pretty much just means theres no "outgoing" really. How is this social networking again, if you can't talk to other people?

Words fail

[quokkapox]

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 more of that viral marketing bullshit.

[Hamster Lover]

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.

More details

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Uh oh

[MrPsycho]

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"

Reminds me

[CaptainZapp]

Oh, and it calls users 'hubsters'

Of the founder of a space opera ufo nut cult, alas Hubbard is written with a double 'b'.

Maybe Walmart just didn't want to get sued. [google.com].

Re:Uh oh

[Ohreally_factor]

Has anyone dicked around over there, had a looksee? I did. I created a profile and a page partway, before I got hung up in their process.

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.

I am gross and perverted
Im obsessed n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little had changed
I am the tool of the government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you cant look away
I make you think Im delicious
With the stuff that I say
I am the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I am the slime oozin out
From your tv set

Re:You Speek the truth

[jawtheshark]

They can't find you online? That's probably only because they aren't computer literate. (Not to diss your parents, I'm sure they are very fine people) Once I get kids, I'm pretty sure that I'll find them online. If only because I handle the firewall/router here and can log exactly what they visit. Even if I didn't, it very feasible to simple get on their computer and check their browser history. (Kids don't get Admin - Fuck I don't give Admin to myself for mundane tasks)

You see, the problem is not that parents don't want to know, it is because they do not know how to. For the future generation of kids this is going to change, because we grew up with computers. Actually, with the dumbing down of computers these days, it is very well possible that we will know more about computers than our kids will.

It's a bit like cellphones: I know people that pay the cellphone bills for their -13year olds. They complain that they call too much and don't know what to do. They still want the kids to have a cellphone in "case of an emergency". What most people don't know is that you can lock the numbers you want to the SIM card (or cellphone) and it won't allow other numbers to be called. People don't know. I do, my kids are going to have a hell of a time to beat me in technology. (Same way I did with my dad, because he was well informed too. I beat him, but it took its time)

Re:Check, check and check...

[goatan]

Actually that was something going through my head, how do walmart confiorm that it is a parent replying and not the child or a friend?

People talk like this is a bad thing

[smchris]

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?

Five Oddities From Wal-Mart's 'The Hub'

[starexplorer2001]

Check #1 on this blog, amazing:

http://neverendinglists.blogspot.com/2006/07/five- oddities-from-wal-marts-hub.html [blogspot.com]

1. This site brought to you by Exxon Mobil
This one weirded me out, I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation: all images are hosted at exxonmobil.download.akamai.com. Paranoid meter now officially ON.

Re:Uh oh

[TubeSteak]

Yea, I got that message too.

So, out of curiosity, I peeked at their shockwave file:
http://a1.g.akamai.net/f/1/25623/1h/exxonmobil.dow nload.akamai.com/25623/theHub/multimedia/home_land ing.swf [akamai.net]

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?

Re:AdSpace

[kjart]

The only thing is, MySpace didn't get created as a way to gather free footage for an ad campaign or to push apparel sales on kids.

Is it just me, or is that what this site already is? I actually looked at one of the 'hubsters' (shudder) and it seemed completely 100% staged. Are there any real 'kids' on this site? Can you even make your own site/have it listed there at all? I would tend to agree with the AC above - I actually think Myspace is better (uh oh, end of the world).

School My Way

[Mateo_LeFou]

Painful, but I watched all four little videos. Did anyone notice that not one of them (remember slogan is "School My Way") mentioned, um ... school? Except that singer said something along the lines of "I sing instead of doing my homework". Does the word 'school' have some strange usage that I wasn't previously aware of?

That's Actually True

[Phoenix666]

I worked a stint in JWT's (nee J. Walter Thompson) Interactive Division on Madison Avenue. Creative Directors would come down with retarded ideas like this all the time two weeks before launching the TV and Print components of an integrated campaign and demand we pull something the size of MySpace out of our asses, with such detailed instructions as, "we want something really hip and cool that's 'viral.'" They asked for the same thing in the same words so often that we had a canned spiel explaining that that word, 'viral,' does not mean what they think it means. Then the marketroids in the Account Department would further retard the Creative Directors' stunted concepts with their lunacy, and finally both the Agency and Client legal departments would do their review of the online component and vomit all over it, touch up the corners with their own feces, and the final product would look exactly like this opt-out message.

It's pitiful, laughable, and annoying; but on the bright side it does permanently preclude a true corporate takeover of the internet's mindspace because even though individuals at corporations understand that they don't get it, the very nature of a corporation makes it impossible that the corporation ever will.

Corporate America/World retards human progress, not promotes it.