Walmart buys Facebook app, Social Calendar

Steven Loeb · March 11, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/2503

The world's largest company makes yet another acquisition

As the largest company in the world, Walmart has a lot to lose, particularly as the last couple of years have seen an emergence of retail and social commerce sites. It's no wonder the company has been on an acquisition spree to stay ahead of the innovation curve.

The retail giant just purchased four-year-old Social Calendar, an app designed to send reminders about birthdays, holidays and other special occasions to users through e-mail.

Social Calendar has more than 15 million users worldwide and send out alerts for over 100 million birthdays. If you are a Social Calendar user, you should be prepared for many ads about what to buy at Walmart, though the Social Calendar website does tell you how to opt out if "you do not wish to receive marketing communications from Walmart."

This is not the first time Walmart has entered into the social commerce space. (Note see our interview, "How Walmart will leverage social commerce," with Venky Harinaryan, who heads up @Walmart Labs and is spearheading Walmart's social commerce efforts.)

In April of last year, Walmart bought Kosmix, a company that aggregates and organizes Twitter data, for $300 million. In May, invested in Yihaodian, an e-commerce company in China. This past September it bought OneRiot, which analyzes what is trending on sites like Facebook and Twitter, then uses the information to deliver ads to consumers. Then, in November, Walmart launched launched, Shopycat a Facebook app that gives people gift recommendations for their friends and family.

Walmart now owns two companies designed to comb over social media sites and determine what is trending and what people are talking about. It also owns an app that is specifically designed to alert people about upcoming events, and one to give them personalized recommendations for gifts.

Don't be surprised if Walmart integrates the apps into one big promotional sale for itself, based on the data given to them by Kosmix and OneRiot.

(Image source: teamaltman.com)

Steven Loeb

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OneRiot

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 27, 2009

OneRiot is the advertising network for the realtime social web.

OneRiot partners with leading brands and media companies to reach millions of social influencers across an exclusive network of top Twitter apps, mobile apps, social networks and content discovery sites.

The OneRiot audience is savvy, socially-connected and always-on. They do not respond well to traditional advertising. Instead, they rapidly consume and share content that’s relevant to current social and conversational trends.

When you partner with OneRiot, we’ll match your campaign content to these trends in realtime, and promote it to a targeted audience across our network. Our proprietary Trending Topics Engine and realtime content matching capabilities combine to deliver resonant brand messages at just the right time. Realtime campaigns with OneRiot build brand awareness, community engagement and drive viral social sharing.

We offer kick-ass solutions for Brands and Marketers, Media Companies, Developers and Publishers.

OneRiot is a privately held company. Our investors include Spark Capital, Commonwealth Capital Partnersand Appian Ventures.

@WalmartLabs (Kosmix)

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on June 20, 2008

Kosmix was acquired by Walmart in May of 2011 to create @WalmartLabs.

Through the innovative fusion of retail, social and mobile, @WalmartLabs is redefining Commerce for the largest retailer worldwide. We are a group comprised of the brightest technologists and businesspeople in the industry, excited about the limitless opportunities that this next generation of Commerce will bring to billions of people around the globe, all in an effort to help them save money and live better.

Kosmix was funded by Time Warner Investments, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Dag Ventures, private investor Ed Zander and Jeff Bezos' personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions.

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WalmartLabs is hiring.

http://www.walmartlabs.com/open-positions/