There’s been a bit of a rumble on Twitter today about HSBCreviews.com, which at first glance appears to have been inspired by Skittles’ ‘social media takeover’ experiment.

In the case of the latter, the usually white background of Skittles.com was replaced with a stream showing tweets mentioning the brand name, as well as YouTube clips, the company’s Wikipedia entry and Flickr photos.

HSBCreviews.com however, is not all that it seems. Though the first impression is that the ‘world’s local bank’ has actually made a huge mistake by drawing so much attention to customer complaints, it’s not an official site at all.

A small header on the top right of the page states that it is in fact, ‘just a bit of fun from thruSITES’. By clicking on this, you discover that thruSITES is a company that specialises in designing, building and launching online communities, Facebook applications and widgets.

Digging a little deeper, its latest blog post states that the company was just ‘bored’, and “thought it would be fun to build a little site which analyses mentions of HSBC on Twitter and displays tweets containing positive or negative sentiment. HSBC is looking quite unpopular today, which is not much of a surprise!”

The post goes on to mention that HSBCreviews.com has also invested in SEO achieve a first page Google ranking for the term ‘HSBC reviews’. “As of today we are 5th down from the top on both .com and. co.uk, which is not bad since the site is only a week old)!”

A quick click-through ensures that the tweets are in fact real, so at least thruSITES hasn’t been foolish enough to fake content. Each comment is rated according to tone (presumably by keyword), and assigned as a ‘fail’ or ‘win’.

However, the majority of feedback is so overwhelmingly negative that at least one person has questioned whether the system is rigged or not. The words ‘test HSBC great’ appear on the homepage (as of last night, though it’s since been deleted from the original sender’s Twitter profile), and have clearly been marked as positive.

On one hand, it’s a bit of a low blow from thruSITES, and the tone of the accompanying blog post seems a tad cavalier. Especially when you consider that the agency is toying with one of the best-known names in the financial sector. It’s amazing that the site has been live for almost four days without being pulled by HSBC, especially as up until 8.00pm yesterday, the small print that now sits on the top bar of the site wasn’t even there (see above). It’s a detailed ‘in no way affiliated’ get out clause, so it’s clear that thruSITES is aware of what it’s doing.

Similarly, if you visit Skittles.com, you’ll see that you have to enter your age to view the social media content – which was added at a later date as a precautionary measure. While the company was applauded for taking a risk (showing raw, unadulterated content that was refreshingly authentic), it was also questioned by some about how appropriate it was for the Mars-owned ‘sweetie’ brand to include the tweets from people swearing or trying to trick the system. Though it hasn’t really been engaging on a long-term basis, when launched back in March, it was the first time that a household name had given the general public complete control of its brand.

If HSBCreviews.com is legitimate, it’s a clear sign that the bank needs to start reaching out to its customers via social media, as they’re talking, complaining and asking questions. This shows that with the technology available today, anyone can collate negative feedback and make a brand look very bad indeed.