Habitat Fails at Twitter

Somebody at Habitat head office must have heard about this new thing called ‘Twitter’ that all the kids are going on about. They decided that what their company needed was to ‘engage’ with customers and ‘join the conversation’ in order to ‘sell some over-priced furniture’. Unfortunately it doesn’t end there, unlike other companies who jump on the bandwagon Habitat went a bit too far.

“This was a mistake and it is important to us that we always listen, take on board observations and welcome constructive criticism. We will do our utmost to ensure any mistakes are never repeated.”

Whoever was doing the tweeting (whichever twit twated) got a bit spammy and decided to include completely irrelevant hashtags. If you have managed to avoid Twitter thus far hashtags are keywords included to signal the subject of the tweet so that you could search for #Wimbledon and see all the updates about the Tennis. The person operating Habitat’s Twitter account included hashtags including #iPhone and #Apple in tweets about their sale. Even worse than this they used #Mousavi and #Iranelection which are being used to get information out of Iran about the events unfolding there.

This shows either a complete lack of understanding on Habitats part or a complete disregard for Twitter users. It must have created a lot of negative publicity and it will take a while for this to be forgotten. I feel a little bit sorry for whoever was running the account as they clearly got a bit carried away and couldn’t have anticipated the reaction they recieved. Then I think about somebody in Iran searching for #Mousavi and reading about Habitat’s great offers and suddenly I don’t feel so sorry for them anymore!

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