When I wrote about the experiment Mars did with its Skittles.com site a few months ago, some people turned up their nose considering it little more than a rip-off of something advertising agency Modernista tried a year earlier.
Basically, Skittles.com itself is a “widget.” Links in the primary navigation go to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Twitter search. In other words, it links to sites other than itself and does so as part of its architecture.
Guess what, it’s not a rip-off, it’s a trend, and at least two more such sites have entered the landscape: Sharpieuncapped and Building43.
SharpieUncapped
SharpieUncapped is a site devoted to showing off the creativity of its customers. From the home page on, links take visitors to Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the Sharpie blog, which, itself, is a separate site. 
Click the Flickr link and you’re taken to a search page for the term “sharpie,” which returns groups set up by customers and fans. The YouTube link goes to Sharpie’s channel, Facebook to the official Sharpie Page, and so forth. In fact, the site refers to these as “communities,” which, of course, they are.
Building43
This is the latest project from Robert Scoble, and is a site that focuses on the newest, cool stuff happening on the Web. It’s sponsored by Robert’s new employer, Rackspace.
The Building43 Manifesto, written by Robert, gets to the heart of what’s truly going on with the site: “We could have taken six more months and built our own forum, our own video distribution system, or our own content management system, but instead we just got started by using WordPress, Blip.tv and FriendFeed, among other technologies.”
While it’s reminiscent of what Scoble started years ago at Microsoft with Channel 9, this site takes that concept and reinvents it in a more socially-oriented form.
Brains on Fire
One more contender in this space, a site that certainly deserves honorable mention, is Brains on Fire, the Greenville, SC-based advertising agency. Agency principal, Spike Jones, told me that as much as 90% of the content on the site comes from other places, like Twitter and YouTube.
Do you see the trend here? The Web as decentralized, in the cloud, a chain of shared connections where no one site is the begin-all, end-all, but a hub leading to other destinations. That’s what the Web is becoming and you had better see that clearly now, rather than later.
Does your current company Web site reflect this shift in mindset? If not, perhaps you should look for another Web design firm the next time around, one that does understand this new mentality.
Lastly, if you know of similar examples that might be useful to our readers, please feel free to list them in a comment.
So what do we make then of Virgin Airlines announcement last week of vtravelled.com, a travel/social community it will host on its own (rather than doing a Skittles)?
Additionally, what does this say about Virgin’s web design firm? That “is doesn’t get it”?
sorry last line s/b
That “IT doesn’t get it”?
Thanks for the shout out, brother Chaney! (BTW, I’m not a principal here, I just play one on TV – our principals are Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell and Greg Ramsey.)
While we have our own site, you’re right – all of our content is housed on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc and pulled into the site to populate it. A bit of a different approach that has served us very well.
Thanks again. Oh, and we’re not an ad agency. We’re an identity company that ignites movements. I’m just sayin’.
@Kevin – There are scores of Web design shops all over the country who don’t “get it.” Lots of Web 1.0 sites still being built that represent the ethic of the destination era Web, an era I believe has passed.
Not good either. I should do my homework shouldn’t I.
I’m simply trying to send a wake-up call to say that we’ve turned a corner in the way the web works and am encouraging everyone to get on board.
@Spike – Well, one out of three ain’t bad.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
You are correct, sir – this isn’t a “trend” but the wave of the future. I tell people, “the web is the only site out there” – since every page is exactly one click away from every other page. For this reason, what is called for today is not “web design” but “web orchestration” whereby you orchestrate the various streams of content that interest your customers and constituents. [SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION] I write about this here: http://tinyurl.com/mm46k4
Thanks for the post, Paul!
So very well written Paul and clear, as always!
I like Matthew’s comment on “web orchestration”
Web 1.0 is still being done I think because “business” is still in the mindset that they control the message.
They don’t. Not anymore. At best, they can hope to manage it.
And why oh why do IT departments still run websites for companies?
Businesses who still rely on a central site that generates most of the content and explains who they are and what they do, rather than an “orchestrated” website where 90% of the content is pulled in from offsite social communities might be more a function of limited resources than a “controlling mindset.”
It takes a lot of individuals with a lot of time to churn out and upload constant content. What happens when the humans stop pedaling? You can end up with skeleton frames and last-posted dates months or years old, which I found on one of the sites presumably designed on the decentralized model.
A symphony with a wonderful, spontaneous mix of voices and photos is a great concept if you have the community and talent, but I think too often too many businesses and non-profits don’t have the time or the labor.
Life is a leaf of paper white, thereon each of us may write his word or two.