Getting a flavour for snark

Much has been made of Skittles' decision to make their home page a Twitter feed for a day. In the slightly more than 24 hours of this 'experiment', discussion of the Skittles website dominated the blogosphere and Twittersphere. While most in the PR and marketing industry questioned the strategy behind a global brand (which markets to children) effectively turning its home page over to a community of strangers, some lauded the company for its wholehearted embrace of social media.

Sadly, things took a dark turn last night when online vermin used the #skittles hash tag to spread hatred, racism and pornography just so they could see their prose on the home page of a major consumer website.

Skittles' parent company hasn't come forward to explain its curious decision so it's difficult to know whether it achieved its objective but judging from its descent into tweets of vitriol and the fact that the home page has been replaced by a Facebook site, we can assume that things did not go as planned. It will be interesting to see how it's explained.

From a PR point of view, this case suggests that while it's okay to open up the airwaves to consumer feedback and dialogue, brands still need to maintain control of certain elements of their equity, the website home page being one of them. On the etiquette front, the open nature of social media invites people of all mindsets to share their opinions and while it's not unusual to see the ravings of a lunatic side-by-side with the musings of an intellectual, this was an extreme case of an Internet idea gone bad and sad.

Toronto the good no more...

Here in Toronto, we are always in the shadow of our bigger, more glamorous cousin to the south - New York City. It's not that we mind. We love our city and accept our place as the nicer, quieter, more polite version of the Big Apple.

Imagine our surprise then to have the world media spotlight shining on us finally but not for the reasons we might like. Yesterday, a journalist for a national newspaper and a PR consultant, both based in Toronto, got into a spat over what appears to be an unreturned phone call and, for some reason, decided to stage the argument on Twitter. The public quarrel comprised profanity, insults and personal attacks. I'm fairly new to Twitter and not totally up to speed on the "rules" but it seems it might have been better to take this discussion offline.

In our increasingly pressured world, I guess everyone is allowed to go off the rails occasionally but ten years ago, this same argument would have likely taken place on the phone with only the participants there to witness it. Now, anyone can google it, find it and share it.

When talking about online etiquette, Miss Manners uses the term: New tools, old rules. The way in which we communicate may have changed but the old adage of treating others with respect never really goes away.