Skittles Website

The new Skittles website seems to have got people talking. Personally I think it's great.

Yes... Modernista did it a while back. But I'm not sure that they can really claim to 'own' this use of technology. It's content syndication, not something creative. To me that would be a like Alan Emtage in 1990 telling people that no-one else is allowed to create search engines because he'd already thought of it.

The point to me is that, whilst some brands invest £100k's investing in websites that enable users to upload photos and videos about their brands... these guys realise that actually, if you let them upload their content to the sites that they're already uploading them then you're not having to create such a shift in behaviour.

Additionally, by staying in the conversation but allowing the conversation to happen in neutrally managed spaces (i.e. Flickr, YouTube)... they're giving a much greater credibility and trust to the content.

If Skittles are smart about the way they choose to use these information streams, I've no doubt they'll be able to do some really interesting things with this site.

Cautionary tales would be to:
a) Brands that are unpopular - do you really want to be streaming content through your own site that is more negative than not about you? If there are big PR issues then you might want to consider how you fix these before exposing yourself to quite this extent.
b) Brands that are not well-known - this site is only interesting because of the rate at which new conversations develop about the brand online. If your brand isn't well-known either there won't be the source material out there to suck in to your site to make it interesting... or at least the rate at which your site updates will make it feel like your brand is not a very dynamic one.