Whoever did this should be shot
This blog post at Social Media Today just got sent round the office about how *not* to use Twitter. It’s the rubbishiest use of Twitter we’ve ever seen (and let’s face it, the bar ain’t that high!).
The offender is trendy furniture store Habitat, who appear to have been sold some kind of automatic tweet-spam generator. Said tool goes off and fetches hashtags for trending topics and inserts them into lame tweets about product. The result is unbelievably crass, as you can see below, and includes hashtags for those following the Iranian Election, with the result is a tweet that reads, “#MOUSAVI Join the database to win a £1000 gift card Now!”
Someone, somewhere is responsible for this. They should pay the ultimate price. It’s one of the worst ideas EVER.
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About the author
Tim has been creating innovative online community stuff since 2000 and was recently named as one of Revolution Magazine's 'Future 50' - one of the the "marketers, authors, entrepreneurs, and thinkers who will shape the digital industry of tomorrow". It also called him "disruptive and challenging". Tim is a founding partner of Made by Many, Agilist, strategist, Dad and designer of social software.
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Comments (8)
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Responses (0)
I still can’t believe someone convinced them to actually start using Twitter in this many, but one small saving grace in Habitat’s favour is at least they stopped that behaviour once they realised how big a f*&k up it was…
andrew pascoe
June 22, 2009
at 1:45 pm
When you say the should pay the ultimate price, what exactly do you mean?
The Shah
June 22, 2009
at 2:00 pm
@The Shah £29.99
tim
June 22, 2009
at 2:11 pm
This morning I was getting a little irate about people jumping down Habitat’s throat for this, it all seemed a bit villagers-at-the-gates-with-pitchforks-baying-for-blood, only it’s social media pundits instead of villagers and erm blogs instead of pitchforks. It didn’t seem that anyone actually knew if it was really them. So, I called their head of PR Claire Durkin and asked her directly. Turns out it was them and they “made a mistake” and are “attempting to rectify it now”.
Mike
June 22, 2009
at 2:20 pm
I can get it cheaper in Ikea!
The Shah
June 22, 2009
at 2:20 pm
@Mike I know what you mean. I think I came to this late and simply couldn’t believe my eyes – and in my new spirit of trying to blog more often and not waiting until I have a huge big blog to post I went with the spasm… It *is* a dumb mistake – I suppose I would have expected even the most non-technical person to wonder what might happen if you started attaching product/brand messages to automatic stuff like hashtags… recipe for disaster
tim
June 22, 2009
at 2:29 pm
Yes, shot like the dogs they are… and maybe not forgiven quite so quickly with the ‘ah, they’re amateurs, it was a naive, if stupid, mistake’.
As pointed out by a colleague this morning, everyone’s talking about Habitat. Links from Sky, chat — like this — on blogs, and a surge in site traffic. When the furore dies down, their brand may be ahead!
Was it REALLY an innocent error? Don’t point and call me paranoid, but I have to wonder…
Sara Williams
June 23, 2009
at 12:39 pm
Love the conspiracy angle. Is it ‘conspiracy marketing’ or a one-off?
Tim Malbon
July 9, 2009
at 12:43 am