Wal-Mart announced they have an agreement to acquire a social network site called Kosmix.
Kosmix, based in Mountain View, Calif., developed a social media technology website that filters and organizes context from other social media networks. It is designed to connect people with real-time events and information that they want to see.
Founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman who started Junglee — which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998 — the focus of the social media strategy is to search and analyze connections in real-time then stream it to personal users to view specific interest.
For example, if you are a Jessica Simpson fan and want to get all the media that revolves around her, simply type her name in the search box and information comes up about albums, movies, relationships and more.
If you are looking for a topic in a specific category you can search by recent topics, movies, books, jobs, education, sports, and more. The website is designed to be easy and readable. There are no pop-up advertisements, no log-in required, and the clean look of the website creates a authentic feel to the information.
The trending events part of the website lets readers who are interested in celebrity news also see what is going on in trending topics or local news stories.
Wal-Mart plans to expand the team and come up with creative technologies and business ideas for the social and mobile commerce. With retail business and e-commerce in 15 countries, Wal-Mart can become an innovative front for Kosmix.
One of the exciting new features on Kosmix’s website is the social media streamline of TweetBeat, a real-time social media filter for live events with more than five million visits last month. When you pull up TweetBeat, it brings up Facebook information, Twitter tweets posted on the subject, photos and video footage.
TweetBeat is considered a social genome platform that captures the connections between people, places, topics, products and events as expressed through social media — be it a feed, a tweet or a post — according to the press release posted on the Wal-Mart website.
Wal-Mart serves customers more than 200 million times per week at over 9,000 retail locations. With sales soaring to $419 billion, they can afford to take a chance on an investment that might bring them more money. They have ventured out with Sam’s Club, a wholesale merchandise distributor, and have done well.
Wal-mart will close the deal to take over Kosmix during the first half of 2012, if customary conditions by the company have been meet.
