Skittles New Website

This new website is definitely different from ordinary websites since it doesn't even have a domain! After you type in the url http://www.skittles.com/, you will be redirected to the Skittles group on Facebook and a navigation menu will appear. There are multiple buttons on the navigation menu, and clicking the buttons will lead you to Skittles pages on different popular web 2.0 websites.

This is how the new Skittles website works. When you click:

• HOME, it leads to the Skittles group on Facebook

Update March 5th 2009: HOME now leads to Wikipedia instead

• PRODUCTS, it leads to the different products page on Wikipedia


• MEDIA, it leads to either the channel on YouTube, or the photos on Flickr


• CHATTER, it leads to the search result on Twitter


• FRIENDS, it leads to the Skittles group on Facebook


• CONTACT, it finally leads to a Skittles page with a simple contact form

If you have no clue what I am talking about, check it out yourself.

Actually a similar approach was taken a year ago when Modernista, an advertising agency, created their website. David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby's Award, discussed the reason behind this approach and said, "...all these great tools out there, you're just not going to be able to come up with a better way to share photos than Flickr or a better way to build community than Facebook". On top of the above reason, I guess this kind of innovative website is also saying, "I KNOW WEB 2.0".

My Thoughts

This kind of website might take a while for it to become popular (if it would become popular) as it is far from intuitive to navigate. It's also nothing I would expect to see when I go on a website to check out a new product. I personally would rather have these popular web 2.0 websites embedded nicely on an actual domain with multiple pages, which makes navigation much more easier. Because I don't know how many people will leave the website due to the unexpected and unintuitive navigation, I would much rather have this new website idea as a complimentary piece to a more traditional website. This will just make lives easier for everyone! Update March 5th 2009: This kind of website is more suitable for produts with a well structured brand, because it's hard to use this kind of website to create a solid brand since the contents are created by many different users.

Source: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134946