seriously, the webpage is now a widget that hovers over all the other social media pages.
I love the fact that the first thing I get is a big disclaimer that says "skittles is not responsible for any of this all these pages are other stuff". What does that mean? Skittles isn't responsible for what it posts on twitter? Skittles isn't responsible for what's on it's YouTube channel? Skittles isn't responsible for it's flickr stream? It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to be immediately greeted by we take no responsibility for how our brand is portrayed online by us!
I sorta love the concept but I have to say I am sorta scratching my head. What is the use of the official flickr photostream? why would I tweet about skittles? Social media is about fucking being social. Talking with your clients looking for what's being said out there. For me what's great about social media is when a company finds something you were saying out there and joins the conversation.
The Chatter/Homepage isn't an @skittles it's a #skittles. A company that is building a voice and engaging people has to have an account so that it can be a person talking to people. Although I can't for the life of me think of what @reply I want from skittles.
@theasm: Wow, there seem to be an inordinate amount yellow skittles in this bag.
@skittles: @theasm sorry about that our PA plant had too much yellow dye #5
Whoever did this understands that destination sites for something like skittles are a tad meaningless. But I don't see from this site what it is that they are doing to start the conversation. The Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook sites are all just mini destinations. The point of Social media is me and my friends are all bitching about how much tropical skittles don't taste like tropical fruit, and @skittles chimes in from out of nowhere like a creepy eavesdropper at a party. Social marketing barges into your lives and interrupts it. This site doesn't do anything to push that. It just provides destinations that you could have gone to on your own.
To me the widget thing just seems fucking lazy. Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook all have open API's so you could make a nice cool page that is a good customer experience and fully leverages all of these social media platforms. There is no reason to be so "in your face" about the web 2.0eeness of this campaign. Nowhere do I really see a voice or aesthetic aside from some snarky photo captions the whole thing is actually pretty sterile.
Is anyone outside of Social Marketers who can't code excited about this? Is someone in Peoria going to fucking hit the roof "ZOMFGBBQ skittles has a facebook fan page! instead of homepage! now I don't have to goto skittles.com to get my awesome skittles news"
Time will tell if they actually use these services to start a conversation. Until then this site isn't social media it's just a neat tech demo. The one thing skittles.com does is allows it's marketers to focus on creating social media instead of a website. However the last video they posted to their Facebook page was 3 months ago, which is a fucking eon on the social webz. Not really relevant engaging content.
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