The Community is pushing the Mobile Web Platform

At @WalmartLabs, our focus is to develop technologies that provide an innovative shopping experience to millions of users around the world. Our customers spend their time on a variety of platforms of their choosing, so we aim to be where they are. One of the key platforms is the Web, and much effort has been spent over the last few years to ensure that users visit Web sites via rich Web runtimes. The mobile Web used to be about feature phones getting minimal content, but that world has changed quickly over the last few years and the mobile device in your hand has an amazing engine that has the power to do as much as your desktop computer.

There have been a number of efforts to standardize features for the mobile Web, but none of them have taken off. Partly, this is due to the fast evolution and change from the world of WAP to the world of HTML5 on the phone. Today, it has reached a point of critical mass where people are looking to push development of the mobile Web platform. This push won't happen with only certain perspectives, and needs broad participation across the industry.

We have been talking to Facebook about the issues surrounding the mobile Web for quite some time, and I am very excited to have @WalmartLabs be a part of a new community effort, the forming of W3C Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group whose goals are clear:

Accelerate the adoption of the Mobile Web as a compelling platform for the development of modern mobile Web applications.

The Community Group will bring developers, equipment manufacturers, browser vendors, operators and other relevant members of the industry together to agree on core features developers can depend on; create related conformance test suites; and provide to W3C (and non-W3C) groups use cases, scenarios, and other input to enable successful mobile Web app development.

A critical topic to address is for most important specs to be supported across a wide range of browsers. But, support is only half the battle. The quality and performance of a feature is crucial as well. This is why we are looking forward to seeing rich test suites that go into that side of things too.

We love the Web, but users -- and thus developers -- demand that the platform evolves faster than it has to date. As we push the boundaries of the mobile Web at @WalmartLabs, we look forward to the opportunity to discuss the needs of users and developers as we work with community members to make the Web a better place.

Join us!

A Welcome to Guna, our new head of @WalmartLabs India

Just a few short months ago, we announced our intention to set up @WalmartLabs India. Since then, we’ve added several incredibly talented people to our Bangalore team in the areas of machine learning, social analytics and big data infrastructure. Today, I’m delighted and excited to welcome the newest member of the Labs India team, who will also be its leader: Gunaranjan Pemmaraju (aka Guna).

Our search attracted some of the top talent in India:  people who have set up and managed large operations in India for globally recognized Internet and technology companies. As part of the process, I met many of these incredibly talented individuals. What attracted me most to Guna is the combination of his technical depth, leadership skills, business acumen, passion for excellence, and, of course, his love for cricket (Ok, I was just kidding about the cricket).

Guna is a seasoned technology leader who comes to @WalmartLabs from Amazon.com Bangalore, where in his role as Director of Engineering responsible for global payments, he set up and grew teams that delivered business-critical technology and services. Prior to Amazon.com, Guna was vice president of product development at i2 Technologies, where he held various product, technology and leadership roles in an 11-year career spanning across Dallas and Bangalore.  Guna holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a master’s degree in business from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

I would like to take a moment to thank everyone from @WalmartLabs Silicon Valley who contributed to the founding of @WalmartLabs Bangalore.   Their efforts under the guidance of STS Prasad, our Vice President of Infrastructure here in the Valley, enabled us to move from vision to reality in record time.  As I welcome Guna to our group, I am confident that he will hire, develop and deliver innovative technologies that will accelerate the new generation of e-commerce for millions of Walmart customers around the world.

Jai Ho!

Get Your Product on Our Shelves

Have a great product that you wish you could sell through Walmart? Do you wish Walmart carried your favorite product, but does not today? Wish no longer! Just in time for the premiere of the new season of Americal Idol we have launched our own contest. Welcome to Get On The Shelf a new contest similar to American Idol where we are searching for the next great product. The latest in a series of innovations from @WalmartLabs, Get On The Shelf offers anyone with a product the chance to make it to the major leagues and have their product carried by Walmart.

How does it work? Pretty simple actually. Submit a video of your product to Get On the Shelf and then, when voting starts, rally your family, friends and fans to vote for it. The product video with the most votes wins. That's it. Simple. Any product in any category currently covered by Walmart is eligible - from housewares and electronics to toys and apparel. Learn more here .

Who will win to have their product carried for millions across the United States. It could be you!

Small is the New Big...

I’m excited to announce that Small Society, a highly respected mobile agency, is joining the @WalmartLabs mobile team. Small Society embodies what has made us successful in 2011 and will help us accelerate that success in 2012.
As I reflect on why this is such a great opportunity, it is clear that there are three things that matter most to building great teams:


Talent Matters
The power of current mobile SDKs means that small groups of talented people can deliver incredible products. This has always been true in software development, but the concentration factor is even more pronounced in today’s smartphone apps. When looking to expand our team, we were incredibly selective.
As we got to know the Small Society founders, they impressed us with their understanding of mobile platforms, their passion for building great products, and their awareness of the unique opportunities for mobile in the retail space. They’ve delivered apps for huge brands, from the Democratic National Committee to Starbucks, all from a small office over a kebab restaurant in downtown Portland. We quickly realized that Small Society could be a potent addition to our existing @WalmartLabs Oregon office.
“Portland?” you say? Yes–Portland! When we acquired Set Direction in April 2011, one of their employees was a crack iOS developer based in Portland. Since then, we have recruited a few more talented developers in the area. Our Portland office works closely with the rest of the team here in Silicon Valley, and together we will deliver world-class experiences for all of Walmart’s global businesses.


Product Matters
What we loved about our first interactions with the Small Society founders was their laser focus on product. They showed us their portfolio and they critiqued ours; it was refreshing to meet a team with concrete ideas on how to make our experiences stronger. The conversations were facilitated with working software more than PowerPoint­–it was great! We didn’t talk about abstract “this is the way it should be done” concepts; instead, we looked at what they had already done and how their product development skills could be applied to our businesses. We came away impressed. One example we looked at was the Zipcar app. The app is a spot-on intersection of technology, brand and business. Named one of Time Magazine's “50 Best iPhone Apps for 2011,” it enables Zipcar members to find and book a Zipcar quickly, but also to honk the horn and lock or unlock the doors—all from their iPhone
From the other side of the table, with our millions of weekly customers across dozens of countries and businesses that range from groceries and pharmacy to financial services, we offered them an unparalleled variety of challenges, and they too were impressed.


Customers Matter
At Walmart, our target market is one of the broadest in the world. If you go to Walmart every week for all your groceries or if you live 100 miles from the nearest Walmart but want everyday low prices shipped to your front door, we want to be your mobile experience be your mobile experience be it iPhone, iPad, or Android.
We’re here to serve people with busy lives and much bigger concerns than the coolness of our apps. If we provide them a way to save time, save money, and get done with their shopping so they can enjoy their loved ones, we’ve achieved success. We obsess over the small details so our customer doesn’t have to. We saw that clear customer focus in the Small Society portfolio and in the people we met.
A focus on talent, product, and customer­s embodied in small teams of talented people – this is what has mattered most to us as we have built the @Walmartlabs mobile team. Our ambitions aren’t small – we believe that mobile can have an impact on every part of the shopping experience for Walmart customers, whether in-store or online. We’re very excited to have such talented new team members to help us make that impact.

The Next Angry Birds?

The mobile game sensation Angry Birds has spawned a whole industry of plushies, games, shirts, costumes, and even these flip flops! What is the next game to capture the public imagination? Our Walmart.com toy merchant, was pitched by a vendor on Fruit Ninjas. Like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninjas is a fun and whimsical game and it is ranked as the #4 game on the Apple AppStore right now. According to social media trends, it has a quite a bit further to go until it’s a real pop-culture phenomena like Angry Birds. For now Angry Birds still rule the roost.

The Hottest Holiday Toys at Walmart

What are the must-have toys that everyone is talking about this season? To figure out what to add to our shopping lists, we tracked the social media chatter about Walmart's Hot Holiday Toys.

Discussions about the LeapPad, the educational tablet from LeapFrog, and the competing Innotab from VTech continue to surge and from the looks of it are selling out fast. There must be alot of parents who are afraid to hand over their iPads to their 3 year-olds!

Lalaloopsy, the magical rag dolls, have been popular in social discussions the entire holiday season but have breaking out this last week.

Have you seen the new Let's Rock Elmo? He sings, he dances, he wirelessly interacts with his musical instruments. In short, Elmo rocks! It's no wonder that Elmo social media buzz has been climbing fast.

Here's how the other Hot Holiday Toys stack up on our Social Media Index.

Social Media Trend Alert: Hot Holiday Toys

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, shoppers lined up at stores like Toys "R" Us to snag some of the hottest toys of the season. With the black friday shopping frenzy behind us, we looked into the social media buzz behind some of the most popular toys.

After looking at this holiday season's most desired toys, it's clear that there is a rising trend in remote-controlled toys. These toys, such as Air Swimmers, Air Hogs, and Syma Helicopters are climbing to the top of many children's (and adults') holiday wish lists.

According to the trends over the past 90 days, Syma Helicopters are at the top of the list with the strongest Social Media Index. Evident in the graph below, remote-controlled toys, especially Air Swimmers, seem to be trending upwards and could turn out to be among the most popular holiday gifts this year.

In case you are wondering, Air Swimmers (released July 2011) are remote controlled, helium filled clown fish and sharks that swim through the air in a very realistic swimming motion.

The chart below provides a breakdown of the social media buzz for some of the top trending toys this season. Syma Helicopters have the strongest share of the social media buzz, followed by LeapPad and Air Swimmers.