Yup, you read that correctly: The hipster Web 2.0 groovy cats over at Wal-Mart (in conjunction with its ad agency GSD&M, of Austin, Texas) are getting ready to launch a competitor to MySpace, according to this article in Advertising Age.

Designed to allow kids to "express their individuality," SchoolYourWay will allow kids (referred to by Wal-Mart as "hubsters") to create their own pages a la MySpace. Well, sort of ... They can create pages as long as they don't mind that Wal-Mart will screen all content, e-mail their parents when they join with directions on how to pull their kids' submissions, and forbid site contributors from e-mailing each other.

Hmmm. Sounds about as hip as being forced to watch feminine protection commercials with your parents.

Yes, this kind of approach does help prevent some of the bad stuff happening at MySpace, but that's exactly the problem. You can't appeal to parents and kids at the same time, and you certainly can't do so while trying to be "hip." The surest way to make something uncool to kids is to try to make it cool to their parents.

Of course, that hasn't stopped numerous companies and government agencies from trying to go the "Hey, kids!" route with clueless marketing campaigns. The NSA tried it with its uncool and creepy CryptoKids™ site. The Federal Trade Commission failed miserably with its ultra-lame Dewie the CyberTurtle campaign, and the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency not only made kids run screaming with its Captain Copyright site but managed to piss off a fair number of civil libertarians at the same time.

Of course, this kind of stuff has been going on for a long time, but the real point is bigger than bad advertising or lame attempts to market to kids. The lesson we can all take from Wal-Mart is that jumping into any of the new alternative marketing and publishing forms that have gotten so much ink during the past year or so (such as blogging or social networking) requires a lot more than aping the format of MySpace or personal blogs.

Is there a business model for social networking yet? Read more here.

Successfully using blogs or social networking in business (whether publishing or otherwise) means really understanding what it means to open your company up to the world and embracing openness ... and that's a pretty scary prospect for most companies. You can't embrace the Internet if you can't see farther than Dave Chappelle's version of it.

A recent presentation posted on Adliterate.com explains this far better than I ever could with this line: "Social media demand that you trade control for influence."

I think that's a perfect distillation of the problem that most companies face when trying to get down with the changes that are going on with the Internet today. They're used to communicating as an effort to control consumer behavior and are finding that this old paradigm doesn't work anymore. The revolution of the Internet has been to move the locus of control away from the producers of goods and services and into the hands of consumers.

Like it or not, the idea that a company can control its brand anymore is over when that brand can be discussed, hacked, parodied or rated on any number of Web sites and discussion forums.

Now you places your brand in front of the world and you takes your chances. Marketers and publishers used to having control can rail against it, but that's the way that it is.

Are you listening, Wal-Mart?

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