Commentary

What Wal-Mart's Small Society Acquisition Might Reveal About Search, Mobile Strategy

walmartlabsWould Wal-Mart build a mobile network to make online searches and orders on mobile devices easier? Whatever the motive, the Bentonville, Ark. company continues to buy up smaller technology firms to support its online business. The latest acquisition -- Small Society, described as a mobile agency -- is the latest to join the @WalmartLabs mobile team.

While the strategy is pure conjecture on my part, here are the facts: Paul Cousineau, VP of mobile products at Wal-Mart Global eCommerce, wrote in a blog post that the Small Society team "impressed us with their understanding of mobile platforms, their passion for building great products, and their awareness of the unique opportunities for mobile in the retail space."

The company has delivered apps for brands, such as the Democratic National Committee, and Starbucks. The team will remain in Portland, Ore. with those from the mobile software company Set Direction, which Wal-Mart acquired in April 2011.  

Wal-Mart acquired OneRiot -- a Boulder, Co. company that had real-time search portal technology and relied on interest-level data from social channels like Twitter and Facebook -- to serve up query results. Then the company bought Kosmix, which allows searchers to explore the Web through a dashboard to find relevant videos, photos, news and communities. Some called it a "categorization engine" that organizes content pulled in from across the Web. Let's not forget its acquisition of online movie service Vudu.

Whatever the strategy Wal-Mart carves out, search marketers should take note. The big-box retailer remains one of the first companies since around 2000 to test and use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to track supplier orders from manufacturing facilities to distribution centers to warehouses and on to the store floors.

Wal-Mart employees have applied for several patents related to RFID and search, but many more related to mobile. The company is no stranger to innovation or digital content. It knows how to sort and sift through the bits and bytes to identify the most meaningful data -- something all online companies, from agencies to platform providers, will need to know how to do in 2012. 

1 comment about "What Wal-Mart's Small Society Acquisition Might Reveal About Search, Mobile Strategy".
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  1. Adam Hartung from spark partners, January 6, 2012 at 11:36 a.m.

    Reminds me of Microsoft making acquisitions in new markets - and then never really does anything with them as it defends its "core" PC business. Wal-Mart can buy lots of small things and it never shows up on the P&L because it is so big -- but we see no signs the company is committed to doing anything other than defending its "core" brick-and-mortar retail stores! Hard to take any conjecture that Wal-Mart intends to be a major player in on-line shopping or technology seriously.

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