Wal-Mart's MySpace Hub

Wal-Mart didn’t win much positive press with The Hub (Ad Age called it "sanitized, controlled, and rather unhip" — perhaps the three worst things you can call a social networking or user-generated content site), so can it do better winning friends on MySpace?

I found its "back to college" page on MySpace, and it seemed to be off to a good start (not sure how long it has been up), with over 7,000 friends so far.

Then I read the profiles. A good number of them – perhaps an overwhelming number – are from kids who work at the store, writing lines, like, "Giving a shout out to my crew at store number 754…..What What!!!" and "whats up from store #1375…Marianna, Fl…top 5 biggest Walmarts in the country".

They get funnier – you need to read these. Two of my favorites are back to back. First Joel writes, "WALMART IS MY HERO – I GO TO YOU EVERY NIGHT WHEN I AM LONELY," and then Bradley writes, "hey were [sic] are all my cart pushers at?"

When I was in college, someone giving a shout-out to his pushers meant something else entirely.