Wal-Mart pulling the plug on their "Hub"

After only 10 weeks, Wal-Mart is closing "The Hub," a social networking site for teens. [Read the story here.] If you go to the Hub site now, you are given a message that says "The Hub" was intended as a back-to-school promotion. This is rather unlikely, as you just don't throw together a MySpace clone for a seasonal, 10-week promotion. You do, however, end your attempt at a social network if no one is using it. If "The Hub" really was a wealth of Wal-Mart advertising and a dearth of community, there's no surprise it has departed this mortal coil.

Another strike The Hub had against it a co-worker expressed perfectly: "The obvious problem for Wal-Mart is that kids (and most humans) do not find Wal-Mart to be 'cool.'" Clearly, there will be no funerals for The Hub. It is also worth mentioning that, assuming they really are obfuscating, Wal-Mart's statement that The Hub was a temporary back-to-school promotion is brilliant public relations. After all, it is possible they didn't mean to build a permanent site. If so, they cannot be blamed for a "failure." Finally, I have to wonder if companies will regularly attempt to create their own online neighborhoods, given the success of all the other social networking services. With the ballooning value of MySpace or Facebook, the false impression that an online community is a license to print money seems to be running rampant.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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3 comments so far

Off Madison Ave: Phoenix Advertising Agency, Arizona Public Relations Firms says:

[...] Walmart’s own doomed foray into social networking shows how this can go wrong if you do not think of your customer on human terms. They understood the technology of what they were creating, they just couldn’t get around the idea that someone might want to log on and not be interested in talking exclusively about Walmart products and specials. [...]

Strategic Planner says:

The failure of Walmart's "Hub" sounds like the result of poor research in the planning stage...

Off Madison Ave: Phoenix Advertising Agency, Arizona Public Relations Firms says:

[...] This means not only determining if a podcast or a blog will get you clients, but compiling the statistical data to prove it is working. If something doesn’t work, we have that information at hand to determine why and correct it. We will never just sell a client on a new media option that sounds neat and forget about it. This is the danger of exploiting this new media landscape incorrectly, as companies like Sony and Walmart have found out in the last year. [...]