{"id":359,"date":"2009-03-03T19:06:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T02:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=359"},"modified":"2009-03-03T19:06:08","modified_gmt":"2009-03-04T02:06:08","slug":"gender-differences-in-response-to-skittlemania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2009\/03\/03\/gender-differences-in-response-to-skittlemania\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender differences in response to Skittlemania"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3016\/2377420546_b0cd210795_m.jpg\" alt=\"skittles from ambibambie39507's flickr page\" width=\"180\" height=\"135\" \/>Sunday night, Agency.com relaunched the Skittles* website as a redirect to social network sites.\u00c2\u00a0 The main page showed <a href=\"http:\/\/search.twitter.com\/search?q=skittles\">a Twitter search for &#8220;skittles&#8221;<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Other links went to flickr, Facebook, and Wikipedia.<\/p>\n<p>Hilarity ensued, with &#8220;#skittles&#8221; shooting to the #1 Twitter term for the day. With over 4000 blog posts and positive articles in the <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123604377921415283.html#articleTabs=article\">Wall Street Journal,<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/technology\/2009\/03\/skittles-twitte.html\">LA Times<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&amp;ct2=us%2F0_0_s_5_0_t&amp;usg=AFQjCNEFeiX16W7PZsdI4wJtBtLSqTrihg&amp;cid=1310093369&amp;ei=IsOtSZDiI6CwkQT2sOimAw&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.ft.com%2Ftechblog%2F2009%2F03%2Fsweet-tweets%2F\">Financial Times<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/adage.com\/digitalnext\/post?article_id=134995\">Advertising Age<\/a>, it&#8217;s a viral marketing success story for the ages!\u00c2\u00a0 Emily Steel&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123604377921415283.html#articleTabs=article\">Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media<\/a>, David Amaro&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/darmano.typepad.com\/logic_emotion\/2009\/03\/skittles-goes-modernista-with-distributed-experience.html\">Skittles Goes Modernista! With A Distributed Experience<\/a> on <em>Logic and Emotion<\/em> and Tiphereth Gloria&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitaltip.com.au\/index.php\/why-it-takes-balls-to-skittle\">Why it takes balls to Skittle<\/a> on <em>Digital Tip <\/em>are some thought-provoking discussions.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s particularly fascinating to me, though, is something Katrin Verclas of <a href=\"http:\/\/mobileactive.org\/\">MobileActive.org<\/a> pointed out on the Progressive Exchange mailing list: the significant gender differences in people&#8217;s reaction.<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, the pattern is there in blogosphere as well.\u00c2\u00a0 I classified the opinions in Skittles articles on the Google News page and a handful of the top hits on Google Blogs as positive, neutral, and negative. The results:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>women: 6 positive, 4 neutral, 0 negative<\/li>\n<li>men: 12 positive, 3 neutral, 8 negative<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And when I say &#8220;negative&#8221;, whoa baby.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediapost.com\/publications\/?fa=Articles.showArticle&amp;art_aid=101402\">David<\/a> says &#8220;<span class=\"articleText\">By just about any rational indication, Skittles went too far.<\/span>&#8220;\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.searchviews.com\/index.php\/archives\/2009\/03\/social-media-whither-skittles-twitter-scramble-mangles-message.php\">Noah<\/a> characterizes it as &#8220;generally A Bad Idea&#8221; and &#8220;a gaffe&#8221;. <a href=\"http:\/\/technologizer.com\/2009\/03\/02\/hey-skittles-get-off-of-my-cloud\/\">Harry<\/a> sees it as &#8220;social-media marketing nihilism.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/richezamor.com\/blog\/analyzing-skittlescom-bad-online-strategy-decision\">Riche<\/a> thinks it&#8217;s &#8220;the worst strategic decision I\u00c2\u00a0have seen online in a long time.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 Yow.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no easy way to know how much this reflects an actual difference in opinions.\u00c2\u00a0 It could be that women avoid harsh criticisms in favor of neutrally-worded posts like <a href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&amp;ct2=us%2F0_0_s_1_0_t&amp;usg=AFQjCNEWEx2RpuZZs2uurLt1UBmYRU_oIQ&amp;cid=1310093369&amp;ei=IsOtSZDiI6CwkQT2sOimAw&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fastcompany.com%2Fblog%2Fallyson-kapin%2Fradical-tech%2Fwill-online-social-networks-help-rebuild-skittles-brand\">Allyson Kapin<\/a>&#8216;s and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.piercemattiepublicrelations.com\/2009\/03\/skittles_social_media_campaign.html\">Shannon Nelson<\/a>&#8216;s raising questions about the effectiveness of Skittles&#8217; strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 One way or another, though, it&#8217;s really striking.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3252\/3048854993_24e0a1b9be.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"twitter logo\" width=\"144\" height=\"48\" \/>Twitter is an opportunity to engage with communities currently marginalized by the &#8220;progressive blogosphere&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Tracy Viselli and Jon Pincus, <a href=\"http:\/\/exceptionmag.com\/life\/technology\/000341\/strategy-progressives-twitter-p2-progressives-20?page=4\">Strategies for progressives on Twitter<\/a> in <em>The Exception<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s an important lesson here for anybody trying to understand social media, and Twitter in particular.\u00c2\u00a0 Make sure you&#8217;re getting a range of opinions &#8212; as well as gender-based differences, there are also age-based differences.\u00c2\u00a0 In particular, if you&#8217;re getting your political news from the male-dominated &#8220;progressive&#8221; or &#8220;conservative&#8221; blogospheres (or the mainstream media and pundits who look to the big bloggers as being on the cutting edge), be aware of the possibility that you&#8217;re getting a distorted view of social network sites and their value.**<\/p>\n<p>Today Skittles&#8217; home page instead redirects to their Facebook page.\u00c2\u00a0 Any bets on how people will react?<\/p>\n<p>jon<\/p>\n<p>PS: in the credit where credit is due department, <a href=\"http:\/\/modernista.com\/7\/index.php\">Modernista!<\/a> took a similar approach with their own web site almost a year ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Allison Mooney&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psfk.com\/2008\/03\/modernistas-new-siteless-site.html\">Modernista!&#8217;s new siteless site<\/a> on pfsk has more.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Skittles photo <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ambiebambie39507\/2377420546\/\">from ambibambie39507&#8217;s flickr page<\/a>,<br \/>\n<\/em><em>Twitter graphic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/joomlatools\/3048854993\/\">from joomlatools on flickr<\/a><\/em>,<br \/>\n<em>both licensed under Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n<p>* a horrible trans-fat-based chemically-tasting candy, if you ask me, although some people loooooove them.<\/p>\n<p>** see for example my comments in\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=268\">Petitions are soooooo 20th century<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday night, Agency.com relaunched the Skittles* website as a redirect to social network sites.\u00c2\u00a0 The main page showed a Twitter search for &#8220;skittles&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 Other links went to flickr, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Hilarity ensued, with &#8220;#skittles&#8221; shooting to the #1 Twitter term for the day. With over 4000 blog posts and positive articles in the Wall [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[113,159,318,323,378],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-computing","category-tales-from-the-net","tag-diversity","tag-gender","tag-skittles","tag-social-network-sites","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}