Social media failure: Why Skittles scuttled its Twitter account

In March, Mars Snackfood had a genius idea for adopting Twitter. It would pull all tweets that mentioned Skittles onto its home page. However, that plan created a big problem. Tweets appeared on the brand’s Web site that said, “If you eat Skittles you support killing puppies and kittens.” This brought Skittles loads of attention—for how not to use social media in marketing, according to Investor’s Business Daily ’s Lisa Schmeiser. “Losing control of your public i…