Wal-Mart Buys Social Media Site Kosmix - NYTimes.com

Big bets in social commerce

Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer, said Monday that it had agreed to buy Kosmix, a social media start-up focused on e-commerce, for an undisclosed sum, as valuations for social media companies like Groupon soar.

“We are expanding our capabilities in today’s rapidly growing social commerce environment,” Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman at Wal-Mart, said in the statement. “Social networking and mobile applications are increasingly becoming a part of our customers’ day-to-day lives globally, influencing how they think about shopping.”

Wal-Mart Buys Social Media Site Kosmix - NYTimes.com