OneRiot joins @WalmartLabs experiment

BRISBANE, Calif. — Wal-Mart Stores marked a major investment in social media and marketing with the announcement Wednesday that its technology unit @WalmartLabs has acquired mobile and social advertising firm OneRiot.

Befitting its interest in social media, @WalmartLabs shared the news via blog post, noting that the Boulder, Colo.-based "OneRiot hasdeveloped some pretty nifty technology that analyzes social media signals from popular networks like Twitter and Facebook to deliver ads that are relevant to consumers’ interests. As our teams debated the finer points of Big Data, Fast Data, and machine learning technologies, it became clear to us that we could find no better colleagues than the guys at OneRiot."

Under the terms of the agreement, OneRiot will relocate and become part of the @WalmartLabs team this month.

"The technology at the core of what we do is the social genome, which enables us to connect millions of consumers with the best products based on their interests at any given moment. The OneRiot technology will enrich the social genome, and the OneRiot team adds to the already deep expertise we have around social data analysis," the blog stated.

Wal-Mart Stores has been investing heavily in social and mobile commerce since April when it acquired the services of Kosmix a Mountain View, Calif.-based company to grow its multi-channel strategy.Kosmix's founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman were tapped to lead the newly formed @WalmartLabs that was created to support Walmart’s global multi-channel strategy, which integrates the shopping experience between brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce. Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman are early pioneers of online shopping, whose first company, Junglee, was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998.