A few years ago tons of companies scrambled to update their web presences to embrace what was being called Web 2.0. The movement is the reason there’s an official Marmite Facebook page, a Nordstrom YouTube channel, and a BuildABear Twitter account. Each of those companies have an official home page as well, to serve as a sort of home base, you know, in case you want investor information from Marmite. Well Skittles has taken Web 2.0 to a whole new level with the newest iteration of their website. So far that its hard to still call it Web 2.0. Read on for more.
The new Skittles.com home page features nothing but a navigational widget in the top left corner and a look at the (uncensored) live Twitter search stream displaying any Tweets containing the word “skittles”.
That’s right, I could tweet about a bag of skittles giving me food poisoning for three months and it will appear right on the Skittles home page. Or I could Tweet George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on TV, with a “skittles” thrown right in the middle, and appear right on the home page.
And its not just the home page. That navigational widget takes you to Skittles’ videos, pics, product information, and friends. Though I probably shouldn’t say Skittles’ videos, pics, product information, and friends, but rather, their YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Facebook pages. Through some nifty web development, the Skittles team were able to simply replicate the pages on these third party services underneath their navigational widget. Pretty clever, I’d say.
So, Skittles. Was handing over your entire site to the unapologetic, uncensored, and completely democratic web worth it?
Of course time will tell, but before today I had never been to the Skittles web page before. In fact, since I don’t watch much television, I don’t know the last time I even encountered the Skittles brand. Had Skittles launched a more traditional new web page today, the rest of the world and I probably would not have even noticed.
Who knows, maybe the next time I’m at the snack counter at the movies, I’ll actually put some thought into my decision, instead of simply asking for my go-to, the Kit Kat. And maybe in that crucial decision mode, my mind will run through the options, and spend a bit longer on Skittles.
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