After the initial buzz died down about their social media makeover, I was more than surprised to find that Skittles had a much bigger problem than design on their hands.

In an attempt at an uncommon approach to a traditional corporate site, last month Skittles managed to fully embrace the value of social media by launching a real-time Web site that integrated popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia.

It was obvious Skittles had succeeded in harnessing the power of social media, but at what cost? Yes, they gave people a reason to visit the site, but what I found was even more shocking than the new layout everyone’s been buzzing about. Following the trend of social media, Skittles allowed its customers to totally take control of the site’s content by rating videos, leaving comments and connecting with the brand. But did this clever approach to marketing backfire?

Where Skittles corporate had hoped to generate positive comments about the brand, readers can now see negative remarks about miscellaneous topics and even the brand itself. The abuse of the comments section is a disaster, especially when Skittles has no real way of monitoring what shows up. Creating a live Twitter stream that references people using the word “Skittles” leaves the brand vulnerable to profane and offensive comments, all in front of a national audience. Sounds like a big public relations problem to me.

Any business that could suffer from an instance of bad public relations needs to know how to handle a crisis before it occurs. In times like these, what you say is just as important as how, when and to whom you say it. For social media to be truly effective, you have to engage in the conversation, too. What Skittles did to cohesively brand its identity across multiple social media channels is a true work of genius in terms of online marketing. But does their lack of control and insight harm their core credibility as a brand, or is this just another example of poor execution? Should Skittles step in or sit back and let users control the conversation?