Internet Retailerreports that Sears and Kmart have launched two communities as standalone websites. They can be found at MySears.com and MyKmart.com.
Though they are linked to the main Sears and Kmart sites, MySears.com and MyKmart.com are separate from the merchants' retail sites. "Our main reason for doing that is that we know from time to time people don’t necessarily want to buy something—they just want to participate in the community," says Rob Harles, Sears' vice president of community.
The communities allow members to write product reviews, post comments on the reviews of others, participate in discussion boards and post ideas for the community to vote on. They can upload photos, and write blog posts as well as exchange private messages with other community members. Users also can create their own profiles on the sites, and Sears hopes to soon add functionality to allow members to import their existing profiles from other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
The sites certainly won't be able to challenge the leading social networks and Sears probably doesn't expect them to. However, the communities could offer niche discussion on topics relevant to homeowners. The sites also contain lots of reviews organized under niche subjects like dishwashers and power tools. The customer reviews probably these community websites more of a challenge to sites like Amazon.com than to the large social networks like Facebook.
Internet Retailer 
