Bloggers with Attitude... Inside Wal-Mart?

Okay, it was one thing when the nation's largest retailer, a behemoth many of us loved to hate, started going green.

But you had to give Wal-Mart credit when the company committed to achieving three huge sustainability goals:

• Converting 100 percent of its stores to renewable energy
• Creating zero waste
• Selling sustainable products rather than those that deplete the environment

Accordingly, company employees have been blasting some of the company's suppliers with a bluntness that would make any blogger proud.

For example, a video game buyer for Wal-Mart slammed a "Star Wars" film as a "debacle."

And, the Wal-Mart employee in charge of buying computers from Microsoft's said of the operating system, Vista: "Is it really all that and a bag of chips? My life has not changed dramatically -- well, for that matter, it hasn't changed at all."

Some of these bloggers even know how to make news.

It was a blogger on Check Out who revealed Wal-Mart's decision to only stock only Blu-ray high-def DVDs and players, effectively killing the rival HD DVD system in the process.

After its previous forays into blogging flopped, largely because executives thought they could use blogs as simply another channel for PR, the company consulted bloggers at sites like The Huffington Post to find out how to do it right.

It appears that they were told that in an age when everyone is a publisher, a blogger's voice is his/her greatest asset. So there's only one steadfast rule: Don't censor bloggers! Centralized control simply doesn't work.

Hey, you got to give Wal-Mart credit once again. They do know how to adapt.

Now, if only more execs inside mainstream media companies (where unzipped blogging can and still does get you fired) would get with the program.

Image courtesy galaygobi via Flickr [C.C., 2.0]