microsite 2.0?

There may be a new type of microsite just around the corner. Anyone that has come across the new Skittles.com can attest to this possibility. What Skittles has done is not absolutely groundbreaking (word is that Modernista, a Boston-based advertising agency, was the first to take this approach). So what is so revolutionary?

Skittles.com is simply a collaboration of the company's exisiting presence on various social media networks. Although the home page is currently the Skittles YouTube channel, it has been rotated through sites that include Wikipedia and Facebook. A standalone menu sits up in the top left corner no matter where you are within the site, be it on the Skittles Facebook page or following a Twitter feed. The only links available to you on the menu direct you straight to all of the most popular social networking sites. The ultimate outcome of such a collaboration is the bringing together of various Skittles communities (do they really exist for candy brands?!) and creating somewhat of a 'super-community.'

Personally I quite like the idea, although Skittles might not be the best application, as it combines various social media sites rather than putting them in competition with one another. This seems to make more and more sense as various sites continue to carve their own niche and provide fairly different services.

The innovative aspect of the site lies in how they are trying to leverage their existing presence on social media sites (which is costing them little or nothing) and trying to make a quasi campaign out of it. Apart from bring the various 'Skittles communities' together, the site really doesn't provide any value to its users - it is purely a social, somewhat viral, effort to get people talking. So will it get people talking about candy? I think it's going to have to because it's not capable of much else.