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, 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. 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.