WalMart Grabs Kosmix
April 25, 2011
Kosmix, along with the now defunct Navgle, were among the most interesting mash up search systems we tracked. The Google deal with Naver for the Navgle service was problematic and disappeared quietly. Did you even notice? Kosmix was a company founded by Anand Rajaraman, a fellow with pretty good connections to some interesting Googlers. Early on, I thought that Google might acquire the company, but the deal went a different direction. Instead of motoring on Highway 101, Kosmix took a flight to Bentonville, Arkansas. We were surprised when we learned in the article “Wal-Mart Acquires Kosmix to Move Into Social and Mobile.”
Kosmix streams postings from social networking sites and organizes them by topic. As noted in the article:
It’s not particularly clear how Kosmix leads to better mobile and social interactions. The company may be best known for powering TweetBeat, which it defines as a real-time social media filter for live events. It also operates Kosmix.com, where people go to discover social content by topic, and it operates RightHealth, which it claims to be one of the top three health and medical information sites by reach.
Kosmix’s value is apparently clear to Walmart. They expect it be an important part of their ecommerce strategy, centered in its new @WalmartLabs. The deal should be complete in the first half of this year. We don’t know much about WalMart, but the company operates in a way that would make Ebenezer Scrooge fell warm all over. The WalMartization of Kosmix should be fun to watch.
Cynthia Murrell April 25, 2011
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