Skittles Rips the Modernista Model!

  • 1 min read
skittles-wikipedia.jpg

To better represent the interest of its users, whose lives “[revolve] around social and user generated media,” Skittles tore a sheet out of Modernista’s playbook and relinquished control of its website.

Visits to Skittles.com drive users to the Wikipedia article about the company, with navs featured in a pop-up that explains what users are looking at (Modernista has one of these too):

“Don’t sweat it, this is still Skittles.com. It just has a new twist. User this as your guide to find anything and everything Skittles that’s online. Have fun.”

Interesting. When Modernista surrendered itself to the Zeitgeist, we thought the move was brave and forward-moving, not least because it nods to pure transparency. (We saw that earlier this month, when Modernista’s “n3wz” section, which points to either Google News or Google Blog Search, was deluged with articles about layoffs at the agency.)

It also opens the label up to just general meanness. Modernista hardly had its new “site” up 24 hours before Wikipedia yanked its page. Modernista.com now points to the Facebook Fan page.

Aaaanywho, the Skittles “site” model will work about the same way. The nav bar will drive you to places all over the “interwebs,” including YouTube and flickr. We like that “CHATTER” points to a search for “skittles” on Summize, meaning you can read everything Twitter users are tweeting about Skittles in real-time.

Ballsy!

UPDATE, 9:45 AM EST on 2/28/09: Skittles.com now points directly to Summize results for “skittles.” Looks like Wikipedia is an equal-opportunity antagonist — although Wiki articles are still used in the “PRODUCTS” section.

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Steve Hall

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