Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) will be selling the T-Mobile G1 powered by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones on the cheap.  Starting tomorrow, 550 Wal-Mart stores will be offering the phone at $148.88 with a 2 year agreement.

This move is a blow to Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), who is selling the iPhone for $199-$299.  T-Mobile stores sell the phone for $31 more.  What will this do for Wal-Mart?  This will help them improve get a more tech-savvy demographic.  

This sucks for T-Mobile stores because they’ll lose customers as the deal news begins to spread.

[via EngadgetMobile]

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has carried on their tradition of sending legal threats to websites about posting Black Friday ads before the embargo date of November 24.  They did this last year and sent out the notices for this year already.  Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) and Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) have a tendency to sue actually after the Black Friday ad circulars go up. 

Many commenters on TechDirt are wondering why this is such a big deal.  As a former retail employee, I can honestly tell you that Black Friday is one of the biggest revenue generation days of the entire year.  If any of the circulars get leaked, it means that competitors have access to your information and can attempt to beat the prices.  This in turn will lead consumers to stand in line of your store instead of other stores.

In this case, I actually empathize with Wal-Mart and believe that they have a good reason to send out these notifications.  The law in this case is being used as a tool for preventing anything that hinders corporate capital gains.  I’d probably do the same if I was the CEO of a major retail company.  Below is a letter that Wal-Mart’s legal counsel firm DrinkerBiddle & Reath L.L.P. sent to GottaDeal.com. 

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Doostang is an invitation-only recruiting and job search engine website that provides listings of high-end jobs.  Doostang was founded by Mareza Larizadeh and Pavel Krapivin.  The job search company started in 2005 and boasts that Doostang users have been hired by JPMorgan, Bain, Google, Time, KKR, etc. 

Doostang has about $4.5 million in funding, of which Shasta Ventures invested $3.5 million.  The company also recently announced that they have poached Drew Carpenter from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT). 

Carpenter headed the media business at Wal-Mart.com.  According to the Doostang Management Team page, Carpenter helped grow Wal-Mart’s photo business to over 10 times it’s size in less than 3 years, thus creating $100 million in annual revenues.  Before Wal-Mart, Carpenter worked at Madrona Venture Group and co-founded SF Interactive.

I believe that Carpenter has been acting as a CEO for a couple of months now, but it was made official in a press release sent to VentureWire and the San Jose Business Journal.  Regardless, I haven’t covered news about Doostang before so I thought why not publish an article about it anyway.

That was a close-call. There are some things that we do not want to have on the Internet, such as a Fortune 10 major supply-chain corporation building a social network. Wal-Mart’s social network target audience seemed to be the same demographic that are victims of online pedophilism on MySpace (young teenagers).

Walmart.com/schoolyourway was temporarily launched to “win fab prizes” and to increase brand awareness as many users of this demographic tend to prefer Target for their school needs.

A video of a girl sporting a strapless prom dress was featured on one of the videos displayed on the site where she mentioned “I’ll school my way by looking hot in my Wal-Mart clothes to school to catch a cute boy’s eye…” During my tenure in high school, I never once heard a girl say that she was looking hot in Wal-Mart clothes. This advertising doesn’t relate to the young ones! Just ask 14 year old girl, Amy Kandel who was interviewed by Ad Age. She stated “Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren’t at all, and they were just being kind of weird.”

Where this social network was placed, now there is a disclaimer stating, “Sorry, but the School Your Way promotion has ended. You will be redirected to Walmart.com where you can always find the hottest fashion, music, and more all year long.” Good riddance.