Habitat makes a twit of itself
The furniture retailer enrages Twitter users by piggybacking hot trends on the social network to spam tweeters. It's the cautionary tale of Habitat and the Hashtags.
In social media terms, spamming Hashtags is the equivalent of chewing with your mouth open at The Ivy. It's just not the done thing.
Shame that Habitat didn't read up on their Twitter etiquette before jumping on the hot trending topics to send out tweets like "Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off" on Hashtags: #iPhone; #mms; and #Apple.
Worse still, Habitat even used the Iranian election to pimp this little gem: "Join the database for free to win a £1000 gift card!".
The whole Twittersphere has been up in arms about the abuse. While Habitat has since removed the offending tweets, it's proved a real lesson in how not to use Twitter.
Although, ironically, the debacle sparked a Habitat hashtag all of its own: #hashtag spam...
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