Social Media Daily News – April 19, 2011

Good morning. Wal-Mart is taking a new route with their social media plans. Instead of partnering with agencies to layout out a social road map, they have decided to buy an entire agency. This move ensures their social, e-commerce and digital strategies are seamless. Wal-Mart’s decision to merge Kosmix into their @walmartlabs group was primarily because of the agencies ownership of TweetBeat, a tool that measures real-time social chatter at live events. Wal-Mart is likely to use this data to track the massive volume of social chatter they see per month. Twitter is reportedly in talks to purchase TweetDeck for 50 million dollars. TweetDeck is a popular 3rd party publishing tool for users on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. Twitter has acquired publishing tools in the past only to shut them down later on. This is more than likely another territory play as Twitter looks to hold down the number of apps available to its users. Facebook launches Facebook Studio for marketers and digital nerds alike. Studio is a searchable gallery of popular/shared campaigns, creative, and tools for marketers to browse and get ideas. What a great idea Facebook, set up a site that allows the world to get inspired by all the wonderful, costly campaigns run on your site. Well played.

I. Walmart to Buy Kosmix to Help Boost Mobile, E-commerce Presence, adage.com, April 18, 2011
II. Twitter In Talks To Buy TweetDeck, mashable.com, April 18, 2011
III. Facebook launches Facebook Studio for marketers, thewallblog.com, April 19, 2011
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I. Walmart to Buy Kosmix to Help Boost Mobile, E-commerce Presence, adage.com, April 18, 2011
http://adage.com/article/digital/walmart-buy-kosmix-boost-mobile-social-e-commerce-presence/227049/
The founders of Kosmix, whose previous online-shopping business Junglee was acquired by Amazon in 1998, will become part of the newly formed @WalmartLabs group based in Silicon Valley. Walmart.com and the company’s global sourcing operation are based in Brisbane, Calif., and headed by Vice Chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright, who took charge of those duties last year after having formerly been CEO of Walmart U.S.

II. Twitter In Talks To Buy TweetDeck, cnn.com, April 14, 2011
http://mashable.com/2011/04/18/twitter-tweet-deck/
Twitter is in talks to purchase TweetDeck Inc. for $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. TweetDeck is one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, available in desktop, iPad, iPhone and Android versions. It displays your Twitter news feed, @mentions and direct messages, along with your Facebook feeds — all on the same screen, all updating in real time. TweetDeck can also support updates from MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare.

III. Facebook launches Facebook Studio for marketers, thewallblog.com, April 19, 2011
http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/04/19/facebook-launches-facebook-studio-for-marketers/
If you’re planning a creative campaign and know you need to do something on Facebook but feel uninspired, help is at hand with the launch of Facebook Studio.
Facebook Studio is a sortable gallery of marketing campaigns and it looks like it will be very useful to digital marketers and creatives.
You can search for the most liked campaigns, the most shared campaigns, by language, region and other criteria, and it’s been created because Facebook has been asked for examples and tools for social media campaigns.