Recently, “technology analyst” Josh Bernoff wrote a blog post about how awesome Wal-Mart’s potential to excel in “social media” is. At the end of Bernoff’s advertisement for his services post, he notes that “the Wal-Mart haters won’t go away” and that he expects the “haters” to comment on his post.  Not one to disappoint, here it goes:

To Bernoff’s credit, he’s managed to notice that Wal-Mart’s earlier social media efforts have failed miserably – notably the Edelman funded Working Families for Wal-Mart site and Wal-Mart’s infamous skirt with the shoppers of tomorrow on Facebook.

Where Bernoff goes astray is when he points to the success of Wal-Mart’s efforts to “try harder”. 

Bernoff details how walmart.com allows customers to review products—and then explains how Wal-Mart can use these reviews to modify which products Wal-Mart chooses to sell.  That sounds like fun, if not vaguely familiar.  I think another more successful website offers not only something similar, but also offers a much wider range of products – how novel!

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...a Wal-Mart Exec travels to Vegas to head a panel on how to integrate blogs and business. Seriously.

From the Wall Street Journal:

John Adwards, senior marketing manager at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), and Michael Brito, social media strategist at Intel Corp. (INTC), will help lead a panel Friday to discuss how companies can integrate blogs and other social media strategies into their business models.

We SO wish we could be there!

*Still 3 posts on the Checkout Blog in the past 38 days, if you were wondering

**And a blogging/online marketing expert named Adwards? really?

Las Vegas Tradeshow To Bring Bloggers Face-To-Face [Dow Jones Newswire via Wall Street Journal]:

“The reach of the blogosphere is enormous and only growing,” says Rick Calvert, founder and CEO of BlogWorld, noting the 1,600 attendees at last year’s event had a combined blog monthly audience of 98 million visitors. Calvert expects attendance this year to increase 20% to 30%.

“Our event is a sign of the blogosphere’s move toward mainstream acceptance,” Calvert says.

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Check Out, we hardly knew ye.

Remember Wal-Mart’s Check Out Blog? The one that the New York Times gushed over back in March? The rowdy band of nine fearless buyers Wal-Mart unleashed to conquer the blogosphere with unfiltered wit and opinion? The birth of Check Out was a time of youthful idealism: finally, a corporate blog where ideas could run free, and highly paid marketers could say what they truly felt. The future looked bright.

But less than a year later, Check Out is dying.

We’ve counted three posts on the site in the last 36 days. The few posts tend to be either on video games or apologies for writing so few posts.

Blogger Susan’s last entry reads:

Just wanted to apologize for being out of touch for the past few months!  Of course I have a reason...I was recently promoted to the Merchandise Manger over the Video Game and PC software categories.  I have been busy learning my new role and feel terrible that I haven’t posted anything as of late.

Russell has also stopped writing, leaving the simple, homespun world of Check Out for the bright lights of more exciting things:

But, let me tell you blogging is hard work.  Anyone that consistently maintains any type of online commentary is to be greatly commended.  It isn’t so much finding time to post, for me.  It isn’t even writer’s block.  The problem is finding a compelling story to tell, one that I think other people would find interesting.

And Tifanie echoes Russell’s sentiment, sadly solidifying Check Out’s ghost town status:

I feel Russell’s pain on the blog front....if you would like to know something specific or have an interest you would like me to expound upon, feel free to make the request; otherwise, you will be subjected to my ramblings.

Most sadly though, sustainability guru Rand Waddoups has been missing in action since mid-July. Perhaps he got moved back to salty snacks and has secluded himself for months, racking his brain to invent the greatest Wal-Mart-exclusive salty snack of all time. (Rand: just let it go, it’s already been done.)

Meanwhile, the rest of us are left to mourn the loss of yet another Wal-Mart social media project. We can only hope another, similarly misguided replacement will come along soon...