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.
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.
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.