Has Skittles gone barmy??

Check out Skittles.com – have they gone completely Web-two-oh crazy or are they simply bowing to the fact that the web is now more of a social beast?

The fact is, many corporate websites were just ‘too’ corporate for many, especially a brand as fun as Skittles, so they had to do something, but have they gone a bit too far now?

Here’s the problem: Web 2.0 and ‘Social Networking’ works so well because it’s dead easy to use. Twitter is so easy that when you first start off it’s difficult to understand what you’re supposed to do, but when you get it, boy is it addictive.

Same thing with Facebook – log in, type some stuff, poke a few people – bish bosh.

So, bring them all together in a ‘mashup’ and you should have the best website on earth, except it appears you don’t.

I dare you to go to the Skittles site and actually discover what you’re supposed to do. It seems to be a link to some social networking with an annoying hovering menu-type effort, just in the way of anything that could be useful.

I guess that when this was shown in the boardroom the designers were in control and they didn’t let the marketing tea, anywhere near the mouse. If they had I’m sure they’d have thrown the damned thing out the window.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems the site fails on a number of issues, the main one being it just annoys me to the point where I’m off to buy a packet of Maltesers.