The Ann Arbor, Mich., company posted a YouTube response of its own and even established a Twitter account to answer direct questions from customers.
"What we've learned is if something happens in this medium, it's going to automatically jump to the next," Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre said. "So we might as well talk to everybody at the same time."
When Amazon was faced with its own consumer outcry last week, it decided to forgo the social media route.
Without warning, many gay- and lesbian-themed books began disappearing from the site's search results and sales rankings. The Twittersphere instantly saw red, accusing the Seattle company of discrimination and censorship and demanding a response.
But Amazon stayed mostly mum. It waited most of a day only to cite an unspecified "glitch," and when that vagueness only fomented the outrage, it released a second clipped statement blaming a "cataloging error."
But Twitter abhors a vacuum, and commenters rapidly filled Amazon's silence with boycott threats, petitions and caustic accusations -- an outcome that suggests that the growth of social media may be driving up the cost of inaction.
Yet engaging with consumers can be dangerous too. Skittles learned that last month when it invited users to post Twitter-like comments on a page that prominently displayed its logo. Among the positive comments were a variety of colorful ones as well.
By giving users the freedom to post their own messages alongside its advertising, Skittles had opened itself up to a kind of online vandalism that seems hard to get away from.
"There's a mob mentality to social tools where people quickly try to put fuel on the fire, really encouraging brand damage and damage to individuals," said Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.
Every brand misstep can spur social-media denizens these days, he said, which affects even those companies that don't actively participate.
To stay safe in the social media minefield, he said, brands need to make sure to secure their own domain names in the various online environments -- before any squatters do -- and then start to build a community there. Then when a crisis happens, online or off, brands can then use that community to their advantage.
