Skittles’ radical trust experiment with Twitter
This morning’s news that Skittles had launched a new site with a home page that’s basically a free-for-all Twitter search for the term “skittles” raises us a whole new DefCon level.
This radical trust experiment is either a totally genius idea, or it will be taken down very soon. Currently, the site seems populated almost exclusively by a combination of social experterati trying to work out which outcome is most likely, and a bunch of other people running around trying to wreck it and some other people who are exploring the outer limits of what might be considered acceptable to a brand advertiser. The ‘other pages’ include Flickr, YouTube and Facebook iterations and the only ‘official’ Skittles real-estate is a floating control panel – a bit like that Modernista website everyone wishes they’d done, but probably don’t visit very often.
They must have been expecting stuff like this:
And stuff like this just crept through:
They must have balls of steel and really great lawyers.
And they must be confident that enough people like their candy that once the noise dies, and all the social media people and the wreckers move on, they’ll have created a revolutionary product support site for Skittles made entirely of external social media sites. That’s a very beautiful, crazy, yet logical idea – and I hope it succeeds.
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About the author
Tim has been creating innovative online community stuff since 2000 and was recently named as one of Revolution Magazine's 'Future 50' - one of the the "marketers, authors, entrepreneurs, and thinkers who will shape the digital industry of tomorrow". It also called him "disruptive and challenging". Tim is a founding partner of Made by Many, Agilist, strategist, Dad and designer of social software.
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Comments (12)
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Responses (0)
they’ve certainly demonstrated the bandwagon effect – the number of tweets is avalanching and more people are being brought into the conversation by confusion alone…
Oliver Meakings
March 2, 2009
at 9:30 pm
Does this mean we can start talking about the Skitterati?
Frankie
March 2, 2009
at 9:34 pm
They should definitely do a limited edition “Swittles”.
tim
March 2, 2009
at 9:52 pm
Of course, as a brand trying to sell a product, the “success” must at least partially be measured according to whether there was an increase in Skittles sales. I wonder how they will measure once the “spike” has gone away…?
Janet
March 2, 2009
at 10:45 pm
I kind of wonder what the expected to happen (language warning!) http://twitter.com/robmanuel/status/1270014222
mattw
March 2, 2009
at 11:10 pm
and time for a Skittler add-on.
but seriously… what did they think would happen?
ab
March 2, 2009
at 11:34 pm
I think the worrying thing for them must be the fact that it’s still possible for kids to see the obscenities before you complete the age form. As @maccman out it earlier, it might be difficult explaining an iframe to a judge!
tim
March 3, 2009
at 12:25 am
I’m definitely getting Skittles on my way in this morning. Hope they’re not sold out..
Elin
March 3, 2009
at 7:38 am
twitter is definetly an excellent feature …but i dnt see an importance to place it on the home page with full screen
gudipudi
March 3, 2009
at 9:09 am
twitter is truly revolutionizing the total web. and skittle is now at its best in implementing the social media applications
sean
March 3, 2009
at 9:48 am
what is a skittle?
ALex Gilks
March 3, 2009
at 10:32 am
That last question is very interesting – because the new site doesn’t really tell you… a totally overturning of the traditional ‘product support site’.
tim
March 3, 2009
at 9:11 pm