Wal-Mart Web Site Makes Racial Connections
Wal-Mart apologized yesterday after its retail Web site directed potential buyers of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Planet of the Apes"
DVDs to also consider purchasing DVDs with African American themes.
The world's largest retailer said in a statement that it was "heartsick" over the racially offensive grouping and that the site was linking
"seemingly random combinations of titles."
"It's just simply not working correctly," said Mona Williams, vice president of corporate communications for Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The article continues with...
The company said it was alerted to the problem early yesterday afternoon after word began spreading among bloggers. When visitors to Walmart.com
requested "Planet of the Apes: The Complete TV Series" on DVD, four other movies were recommended under the heading "Similar Items." Those films
included "Martin Luther King: I Have A Dream/Assassination of MLK" and "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson."
Williams said similar titles were called up when the DVD of the movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was requested. There were three such
combinations involving those two movies and African Americans films, she said...
Like most other major retail sites, including Amazon.com, Wal-Mart's site directs users searching for movies to other titles that might interest
them; Wal-Mart calls the process "mapping." Wal-Mart said last night that the system was malfunctioning but did not explain why or how...
Isn't this "mapping" really just tagging???  If it is, then it would mean
that the associations were wilful, and that nothing was really screwy with their software as they suggest.
Makes you wonder if it was just a rogue employee or truly an approved association by management. Given Walmart's history on race relations, this
doesn't look very good for them.
Ouch!
[edit on 6-1-2006 by loam]
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wierd. 
