Wal-Mart’s Attempts At Copying MySpace Go Down In Flames

October 2, 2006 | By Darnell Clayton | Filed Under Social Media

The retail giant attempted to enter into the youth culture via cyberspace by creating a social network similar to MySpace. Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, many of the youth did not seem too impressed with the site, which may have to do with the actors half baked attempts at appearing cool.

(Market Day) [...]“Beth’s Backyard Club,” where you find a picture of “Beth” in a strapless prom dress with such cut-line gems as “I’ll school my way by looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes to school to catch a cute boy’s eye…”

“Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren’t at all, and they were just being kind of weird,” said Amy Kandel, 14, of Columbus, Ohio, speaking with Ad Age. “Are these real kids?”

That is something one may be wondering as well, as the actors-posing-as-teens gimmick is not that convincing as one can tell from the photo below.

Although this was a good idea by Wal-Mart, their attempts at avoiding future lawsuits by allowing parents to control page content was probably the biggest turn off, aside from the not-so-hip actors.

The Wal-Mart social network site is no longer up as they have pulled down the web page, although users can take a limited preview of it by visiting http://www.walmart.com/schoolyourway before being redirected towards Wal-Mart’s home page.


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© Copyright 2006 The Blog Herald | Submit post to Blogosphere News | More articles by Darnell Clayton


Comments

6 Responses to “Wal-Mart’s Attempts At Copying MySpace Go Down In Flames”

  1. Starked SF, Unforgiving News from the Bay » Blog Archive » Talk of the Town: Tuesday on October 3rd, 2006 8:52 am

    [...] Wal-Mart bungs up its MySpace knock off. [...]

  2. Cogent Insights » Blog Archive » Walmart’s MySpace clone dies on October 3rd, 2006 3:41 pm

    [...] SchoolMyWay, Wal-Mart’s much criticized social networking site, has closed. Or as the now defunct site says: “The SchoolMyWay promotion has ended.” [...]

  3. WalMart’s MySpace Clone Dead on Arrival - Mashable! on October 3rd, 2006 11:29 pm

    [...] (via BlogHerald) [...]

  4. I’m into nuggets y’all « Duck Duck Gray Duck - A Look At Marketing In Minnesota on September 7th, 2007 2:25 pm

    [...] create your own webpage and ask people to upload videos or create profiles on it like Panasonic or Wal-Mart did. No one cares about your UGC/social networking site. They exist already. Teens are smarter than [...]

  5. Dangerous Chunky notebook » Ways to Improve the Art World, Idea #4097 on November 1st, 2007 3:46 pm

    [...] have actually been many failed social networking sites that have already evaporated into thin air (example c, example d.). For those that weren’t absorbed into the corporate lair of Microsoft or Google, [...]

  6. Not every site needs to be a social network » The Bivings Report on February 8th, 2008 1:10 pm

    [...] the two highest profile corporate social networks I am aware seem to have been shuttered.  Wal-mart shut down its socnet aimed at teens a year and a half ago.  Nike’s soccer themed-social network, Joga, [...]

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