Following on from yesterday’s observations on the skittles.com experiment, today their Flickr account has been presumably deleted.
Yesterday the Skittles site’s “Pics” link showed the Skittles overlay on a Flickr user account displaying a handful of pretty product shots (a screenshot can be found at this Flickr discussion). Today that same link instead goes to a Flickr search results page for the word “skittles”, bringing up user generated pictures. Yesterday’s user account appears to have disappeared.
Either someone within the Skittles project has realised that their use of Flickr in this way is against the terms of use (commercial use must be approved by Flickr), or Flickr has pulled the plug.
It’s quite strange that with the presumed intention to promote user generated content by setting the Skittles home page to show the “skittles” twitter search results, they originally opted to show their own content from Flickr.
Regardless, here’s the lesson: if you’re going to use content from outside of your own creation, or interfere with another site, read the fine print and contact the owners before proceeding.
skittles search on Flickr
Here’s another piece of commentary on the site:
- Ticking the Boxes by Danielle Long
