Walmart and Facebook

Wired is reporting on Walmart’s use of Facebook (sub needed) for advertising. They had purchased one of the advertiser profile pages on the site, to promote their back-to-college deals to fill the new dorm room but have run into the social network issue – open up conversation and you no longer control it. In this case, there are a lot of comments about Walmart labour practices and their perceived tendency to put smaller shops out of business where-ever they go but there is also a fair number of people sticking up for them. No Walmart statements though I see. Is this a conversation they can get anything out of? There’s an opportunity there, the environment is set up for 2-way conversation but I get the feeling that lawyers/PR people won’t let them.