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It's a publicity stunt. Of course, every time a company engages in a publicity stunt like this, the same debate we're all having takes place. Pro: "Wow, what

It's a publicity stunt. Of course, every time a company engages in a publicity stunt like this, the same debate we're all having takes place. Pro: "Wow, what a great campaign!" Con: "Pshaw, it's just a gimmick." Pro: "Oh really? It got you talking about it, didn't it? So clearly it must be working." Con: "Grrrrrr..." The only reason why we're having this discussion here, on Hacker News, is they happened to choose flavor of the month Twitter as the focus of the stunt. Wow, so they have the ability to discern what the hottest meme on the web right now is. They could have also given Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie a million dollars to shave the Skittles logo on the back of their children's heads. If they had done so, no one would here would give a shit, but I can guarantee you the message boards at Perez Hilton and celebritybabies.com would be lighting up with the exact same conversation we're having here. You will convince me that this is something more than a gimmick if one month from now ANYBODY is still taking about this or visiting that page. Actually, if they're even still USING the Twitter stream as their home page a month now I will be halfway convinced.

bouncingsoul 18y ago
You're right that it's a publicity stunt. But is that a bad thing? Yes, if their goal is to make their website popular in the longterm and a hot destination on the web. But what if their goal is just to garner some publicity? This did that. Also, publicity stunt implies a lack of substance, but I think the near complete outsourcing of their site and image management really is an interesting event. (And probably other people do too, so in the next couple weeks people will write blog posts about whether this is a turning point on the web or whatever – and each one of these posts will mention Skittles. A few months from now there might be a newspaper or magazine article about it, which would reach a different set of people.) So it is a gimmick, but a genuinely interesting one that didn't cost much and will probably sell a few more bags of Skittles.
- jsdalton 18y ago
  I just disagree with you that it is interesting at all. It has the illusion of interestingness because it's about Twitter -- hey, it's web! it's Twitter! i do that stuff for a living! -- but it is completely lacking in substance. What do I mean by this? I mean you will not see any other company following their lead. Because there is no point in doing this if you take away the novelty and the chatter in the blogosphere...I mean it's not a meaningful way to communicate with people via your site's home page. Sorry, but it's also just facile. It's so stupidly easy to come up with gimmicks like this that fit the flavor of the month. Hey, it's 2002, let's turn our home page into the Google search results page for "skittles"! Hey, it's 2005, let's make our home page a wiki and allow anyone to edit it! Hey, it's 2006, let's turn our home page into a Youtube video stream of videos tagged "skittles"! So it's 2009, and they chose Twitter. Sorry, but there is just nothing original or interesting about that.

bouncingsoul 18y ago

You're right that it's a publicity stunt. But is that a bad thing? Yes, if their goal is to make their website popular in the longterm and a hot destination on the web. But what if their goal is just to garner some publicity? This did that. Also, publicity stunt implies a lack of substance, but I think the near complete outsourcing of their site and image management really is an interesting event. (And probably other people do too, so in the next couple weeks people will write blog posts about whether this is a turning point on the web or whatever – and each one of these posts will mention Skittles. A few months from now there might be a newspaper or magazine article about it, which would reach a different set of people.) So it is a gimmick, but a genuinely interesting one that didn't cost much and will probably sell a few more bags of Skittles.

jsdalton 18y ago
I just disagree with you that it is interesting at all. It has the illusion of interestingness because it's about Twitter -- hey, it's web! it's Twitter! i do that stuff for a living! -- but it is completely lacking in substance. What do I mean by this? I mean you will not see any other company following their lead. Because there is no point in doing this if you take away the novelty and the chatter in the blogosphere...I mean it's not a meaningful way to communicate with people via your site's home page. Sorry, but it's also just facile. It's so stupidly easy to come up with gimmicks like this that fit the flavor of the month. Hey, it's 2002, let's turn our home page into the Google search results page for "skittles"! Hey, it's 2005, let's make our home page a wiki and allow anyone to edit it! Hey, it's 2006, let's turn our home page into a Youtube video stream of videos tagged "skittles"! So it's 2009, and they chose Twitter. Sorry, but there is just nothing original or interesting about that.