Habitat Apologies After Twitter Hashtag Spam Campaign

UK’s renowned furniture store Habitat has made an apology after it was accused of promoting offers at its stores by using keywords related to Iranian elections as well as the high-profile iPhone 3GS launch on its Twitter feeds.

The group running HabitatUK Twitter account were using keywords, known as “hashtags”, to their twitter updates, so as to make sure that the company’s feeds appeared among the hot “trending topics” on the microblogging website.

The company had erroneously used several contentious hashtags related to recent protests in Iran, including #Iranelection and #Mousavi, along with #Apple and #iPhone to capitalise on the launch of new iPhone 3GS last Friday.

Although the company has already deleted the offending tweets from its Twitter account, but many of them can still be accessed using the search function of the microblogging service.

The publicity stunt has drawn severe criticisms from the online community, which eventually made the furniture giant to come forward to apologise for the move.

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Extending its apology, the company spokesperson said, “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”. 

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